EDonkey is overtaking KaZaA outside North America

October 19, 2003

A new study by Sandvine Incorporated shows that P2P is now a multi-application entity, indicating that FastTrack may be losing its dominance, at least in some parts of Europe. While KaZaA continues to reign in North America, Europeans appear to be cultivating unique network patterns and preferences in relation to their favorite peer-to-peer (P2P) clients and the types of content they are sharing.

"The file sharing 'marketplace' is really only a few years old, but it's changing rapidly and we're now seeing measurable divergences along geographic, even national lines." said Chris Colman, managing director, Europe, Middle East and Africa, of Sandvine Limited. "In the beginning there was only Napster. Today's file sharing environment is much more fragmented, with a varying proportional mix of current and emerging P2P applications dominating in each region."

In The United States and Canada, Sandvine's study shows that FastTrack-based applications like KaZaA still generate more than 76% of all P2P traffic -- more or less uniformly across the continent.

But in Europe, end user preferences tend to vary country-by-country, with FastTrack often playing second fiddle to newer applications like eDonkey. In Germany, for instance, eDonkey accounts for more than 52% of file sharing traffic VS. 44% for FastTrack.

The study mentioned is entitled: "Regional characteristics: P2P as a multi-protocol, multinational phenomenon," and can be read if downloaded at the Sandvine download center. There are a total of six PDF files to be found there. You must be logged in to access the files.

One that may also be of interest is entitled: Worm Mitigation on Broadband Networks: The latest research shows that file-sharing protocols have become favored vectors for worm infection, allowing worms to spread more efficiently and have greater potential of exhausting service provider's networks.

Source: mi2n.com