eDonkey Sees Surge in P2P Traffic

Data released on Monday shows that while BitTorrent networks have seen a decrease in traffic, file sharers have simply moved to another network technology called eDonkey.

The study from British-based CacheLogic shows that traffic for the two networks is about the same in several countries, and eDonkey has surpassed BitTorrent in Italy, Spain, Germany and South Korea. eMule, a variant of the eDonkey client, is especially popular in western Europe.

Hollywood over the past year has cracked down hard on BitTorrent sites, with several large nodes successfully shut down. However, it appears that file sharers are not being deterred by the threat of legal action and are simply finding new ways to trade files.

The CacheLogic study claims that 60 percent of the traffic on the Internet is due to P2P file sharing, and that at one point last year BitTorrent alone accounted for a third of bandwidth used.

The study also showed that use of Gnutella, one of the early P2P technologies, was on the rise once again. The service was one of the first to be persued by the music industry in an attempt to curb illicit file sharing. Software such as LimeWire and BearShare utilize Gnutella.

Recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court against P2P seem to have had no effect on usage. CacheLogic said that the ruling did not cause a rapid drop in illicit file sharing over P2P networks as some in the industry had hoped.