The report found these real-time, interactive applications increase up to 50 percent per subscriber during peak evening hours.

"Our research implies that families are spending more of their leisure time during evening hours on Internet-based entertainment and communication such as YouTube, Xbox Live and Skype," said Dave Caputo, Sandvine co-founder, president and CEO.

"Not only does this signal a dramatic shift in consumer behavior but emphasizes the rapid evolution and real strain placed on the Internet."

Peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic remains dominant in the upstream direction totaling 61 percent of network traffic and also accounts for more than 22 percent of downstream bandwidth consumption globally.

The amount of P2P traffic per subscriber stays at a relatively high steady rate during times when networks have their highest volumes of traffic.

The report also revealed that Web traffic and streaming videos account for 59 percent of downstream bandwidth consumption. During the evening’s peak hours these Web applications consume up to 64 percent of total downstream bandwidth.

This large amount of bandwidth is composed of a variety of different types of traffic, including Web browsing, social sites with large amounts of digital photos and buffered real-time video sites such as YouTube.

"Bulk bandwidth applications like P2P are on all day, everyday and are unaffected by changes to network utilization," said Mr. Caputo.

"This reinforces the importance of protecting real-time applications that are sensitive to jitter and latency during times of peak usage. Effective network traffic optimization techniques use sophisticated policies that balance network capacity, application requirements and subscriber quality of experience in real-time."

The whole point of having a speedy Internet connection is to be able to use it. When Comcast put roadblocks on the popular file-sharing technology BitTorrent, they aroused the ire of thousands of customers.

At least one of them wants something done about Comcast’s practices. Threat Level noted the lawsuit filed by Jon Hart, who accused the of deceiving customers with its ads, which run contrary to its practices:

Defendants have disseminated and continues to disseminate advertising, that they know or should reasonably know is false and misleading. This conduct includes, but is not limited to, promoting and advertising the fast speeds that apply to the Service without limitation, when, in fact, Defendants severely limit the speed of the Service for certain applications.

It further includes Defendant’s misrepresentations that their customers will enjoy "unfettered access" to all internet applications, when, in fact, Defendants not only fetter certain applications, but completely block them. Defendants know or reasonably should know that this advertising is false and misleading.

It is believed Comcast uses a technology from Sandvine to continually reset BitTorrent connections being made by their customers. DSLReports.com first began discussing this in May 2007.

"I learned about Sandvine and got word from another Sandvine customer that they’re bragging about their Comcast deployment in order to make sales," Robb Topolski wrote in that post.

Hart wants class-action status for his lawsuit against Comcast. Comcast continues to claim it does not block connections, including peer to peer. But they aren’t being accused of doing so; it’s the hindering of traffic to the point where the response time approaches infinity that has Hart and other Comcast customers steamed.