Megaupload found to be major bandwidth user
Megaupload found to be major bandwidth user
Recently shut down uploading site, Megaupload, has been found to have been a massive consumer of bandwidth compared with some similarly popular file sharing services.
Megaupload was shut down by the FBI after seven associates of the site were found to be involved in “widespread online copyright infringement." The site has long been a popular file sharing facility used by home internet users and has, therefore, started to become popular in the workplace.
Research by Palo Alto Networks found that 57 per cent of the 1,636 businesses around the globe whose internet traffic was analysed for a week, had Megaupload usage on their managed networks. This in itself might not be particularly concerning, however, the fact that Megaupload usage accounted for 20,405 gigabytes of bandwidth overall needs to be noted. This compared with just 17,573 gigabytes used by Dropbox.com, which was present on some 76 per cent of business network analysed.
It seems that the research found that although Megaupload was only present on 56 per cent of business networks, it used far more bandwidth than its competitors that were popular with businesses.
Another file sharing service, called Filesonic, was also tracked by Palo Alto. It was spotted on 52 per cent of business networks, but only took up 4,058 gigabytes of bandwidth, making it one of the more efficient services of its kind.
The research established that both Megaupload and BitTorrent have a much larger share of the web as a whole, outside of the corporate world.
Palo Alto claims that many users of these kinds of file sharing services are unaware about how much space they are taking up on their computers, The firms said that customers were often shocked when they found out how much usage their file sharing was taking up, stating: "I knew I had some of these applications on my network, but I didn't realise I had so many,” according to Matt Keil, one of its senior analysts.
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