Most people tend to think of the home as the last place where PCs and laptops dominate, but it turns out even in the house mobile devices are taking over.
According to a new report from Sandvine, a Waterloo-based company that provides networking solutions to enterprise customers, the average North American household has more than seven active devices in use each day. However, desktop and laptop PCs accounted for less than 25 percent of total downstream and upstream traffic on fixed home networks during the period the company studied.
That said, people still use their computers exclusively, especially to watch live sporting events. During the just completed 2016 Rio Summer Olympics, the majority of streaming traffic — 61 percent, to be exact — originated from desktops and laptops.
Sandvine also collected data on PlayStation 4 usage. According to the firm, game traffic represented only 2.5 percent of total traffic coming from these devices. Video streaming, using apps like Netflix, and downloading games represented a total 90 percent of bandwidth consumption. It’s important to note here that playing a game online doesn’t actually require that much data to be exchanged, so the stat isn’t necessarily a good gauge of how people are using their consoles.
It also turns out the majority of North American households, more than 12 percent, access Netflix not from devices like the PlayStation 4 or Chromecast, but from television set-top boxes that allow the user to stream over-the-top content.
What do you use to stream video content? Tell us in the comment section.
Related: New report shows how Canadians are addicted to Netflix, YouTube
[source]Sandvine[/source]
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