Based on data collected from 67 different ISPs, Arbor Networks has started to analyse the behaviour of Internet traffic. In a first blog post that should be followed by others, Craig Labovitz compares the daily evolution of the volume of Internet traffic in both the US and Europe. While in both cases the traffic grows during the day and peaks during the evening, a clear indication that Internet traffic is more and more driven by consummer usage than by business/education usage as in the past, the traffic in Europe drops much more faster at late evening than in Europe.

We can now start to speculate on why Europeans and Americans have different nightly traffic patterns. My bet is that Americans leave their PC running with peer-to-peer software during the night while Europeans stop their PCs while sleeping...