P2P use is down this year, possibly thanks to the growing availability of online video. Network equipment provider Sandvine observed these two trends in its "2009 Global Broadband Phenomena" report (via Broadband Reports), noting that there was a "dramatic increase" in realtime video consumption while users are moving away from bulk downloads that they can't consume right now. While this doesn't mean P2P is dead just yet, it reflects a shifting user focus as more content providers give people what they want the legal way.

"Realtime entertainment traffic"—which includes video and audio streaming, Flash media, and other various webcasts—grew to more than 26 percent in 2009, according to Sandvine. This reflected a 12.6 percent growth, or a near doubling of the numbers from last year. YouTube, of course, remains a top destination for those looking for video entertainment, and North Americans consume the most videos (per subscriber) globally. Europeans, however, consume the most YouTube minutes out of any region.

Comparatively, filesharing over P2P has dropped by 25 percent year-over-year, now accounting for a hair over 20 percent of all broadband traffic. According to Sandvine's analysis, the decline was most prominent in Latin America and the Caribbean (30 percent), while North America only experienced a 20 percent decline. In all of these areas, however, there has been an increase in real-time entertainment consumption as well as plain vanilla Web browsing—people appear to be losing patience for big downloads (legal or not) when they can get more and more of the same content instantly somewhere else.

(The company also noted that BitTorrent "emerged" as the leader in this area—frankly, there hasn't been a time in recent years when this wasn't the case—though there are still a few other players like Gnutella and Foxy.)

This shift from P2P to video is nothing new—if anything, it's just getting more dramatic now that there are even more options available to the average user. The popularity of Hulu and YouTube are a given, but other streaming applications have also exploded in popularity, including Last.fm, Pandora, NPR, BBC iPlayer, and more. As we observed in 2008, if this shift continues, it will benefit content owners and users alike by offering more legal—and therefore money-making—options to everyone.

There's one lingering concern, though, and that is the level of traffic being sucked up by these new (and old) media consumption mediums. Heavy users are still consuming large chunks of broadband traffic compared to everyone else, whether they're watching YouTube or downloading on BitTorrent. Sandvine says that the top 1 percent of subscribers account for 25 percent of total Internet traffic, while in the upstream direction, those same users suck up a full 40 percent. In a larger sense, the top 20 percent of broadband subscribers are responsible for a staggering 80 percent of total Internet traffic. "A heavy user is responsible for more than 200 times the total bytes of an average subscriber," reads the report. 50Mbps, anyone?