First, sandvine calls it an app for legacy reasons, but 100% that is the bit torrent protocol. I have insider knowledge that this is the case. So don't get hung up on that. But you're right to doubt them. They are a shell of what they once were. Their fixed deployments are quite small now and do not represent fiber at all, which just hit over 50% in availability in dense US areas. Sandvine is still in Comcast at 100% coverage and in Cox, but they're tiny. Sandvine is a bit sparse in mobile, but still there solidly. I believe that bit torrent is rare in mobile. Like no shit. I believe them that it's down in fixed copper (dsl and cable). But they're missing 100% of fiber. Sandvine does pattern recognition primarily. It used to be great. I suspect it's still pretty good. They claim better than 90% accuracy. I'm sure the data they have is correct. But what they get from their customers is definitely questionable at times. They've made some huge mistakes in the past, grabbing data for too short a period of time or not across a broad enough customer base. I'm sure that's still the case. What we need is someone like Kentik, Deepfield, and anyone else doing flow correlation to release a report. But they won't because no company gives away that kind of data anymore. So we're stuck guessing.

My head just tried to explode

Lol this is like saying

"Needless to say, TCP/IP is nowhere to be found in the list of 'top apps'"

Of course it isn't you numpties

Piracy and torrenting was always a service issue. Sure, there is some core of people who will never pay for content or a service. But, a lot of people will be happy to pay something for content, so long as they can get what they want without too much hassle. And that has largely been the landscape for the past decade or so. Apple Music popped up and gave people the same sort of access to music Napster did, at a cost which wasn't ridiculous. It also didn't host a million viruses and didn't carry with it any sort of moral questions or legal risks. Netflix did the same for movies and TV, shrinking the space for video piracy. And many movie and TV producers are finally accepting the new paradigm and trying to carve out their own space which mimics the speed and convenience of piracy, while still earning them some money. We probably have a long way to go and a lot of growing pains. But, the fact that torrent traffic is falling and official streaming services' bandwidth usage is growing shows that they are doing something right. That said, I suspect that we will see them fluctuate for a while as customers punish the more outlandish attempt to monetize streaming services. When the official services start getting too bad again, we'll see more black flags flying. And that's a good thing.

A lot of people today don't even know how to use their devices, but only how to use the products offered by those conpanies.

That has always been the case.

The article touches on that. VPN traffic is itself a small category, so even if we assume all VPN traffic is torrenting, that doesn't push it very far up the charts.

Sandvine uses pattern recognition primarily. VPN doesn't matter. It still gets categorized correctly.

Pirate traffic did decline dramatically because of fair and convenient streaming options. But now the streaming options aren't fair or convenient anymore and piracy is on the rise again. The studios got greedy again, feeling that they hold all the power over a helpless and captive audience, and they miscalculated. Yo ho ho!

like it or not. torrenting and keep it on local drive is good for preservation because we have shit like this https://www.ign.com/articles/anime-fans-frustrated-as-funimation-digital-copies-wont-move-to-crunchyroll

Really? We've been able to stream torrents for a few years now. I use it more than ever now because of this.

You dont have to be a nerd to run Stremio

Same for "lost media" kinda stuff. I would usually find Torrents with seeds for obscure bands from my dad's old country, that he loves listening to, but nowadays, all that stuff is gone, and no way to purchase the bootleg of a concert in Eastern Europe, in 1992.

Hell, even official albums are hard to get, with being out of press, the rights being lost to the ages and stuff like that. Even with music from when I was young, and I'm not even 40.

Last time I ranted about it, people told me to just find the stuff on YouTube and download it from there, it was atrocious.

The interest in bittorrent usage has been on a gradual decline for good decade at least. Try looking for some recent shows these days and you'll be hard pressed to find many seeders for even popular ones. You'll still be able to download it eventually but it's a long way down from the heyday when obscure content was highly available.

I'm living in a country of an obscure language, and this is not really a problem here, so I'm a bit surprised to read this.

I believe the low seed counts are due to the absolute trash out there. Actual good shows and movies are still strong. Niche items have always been hard to find. But we're saturated with garbage entertainment these days. No one really cares to seed what they watch once and then never think about again.

Got any good HTTP links worth bookmarking for Linux ISOs? lol

I don't get why they won't just torrent

You have to find a torrent that hasn't been subject to a DMCA takedown, research the ones found to make sure it's good quality, not a virus, and has enough seeders to be viable. Make sure you have a VPN and that it's up to date so your ISP doesn't start sending angry letters. Then you have to wait for the torrent to download and make sure you have enough storage space for it.

And you "don't get" why they prefer a click and go option?

They are not tech-savy.

Because torrenting is strongly enforced by the law where I live, in Germany.

I have tried to get on this “Usenet” a few times but to no success. The software was ass, and the instructions for it were worse.

Any handy guides, anyone??