What percentage of the Internet Traffic is junk?

Thu May 6 19:08:16 UTC 2004

> There is also a lot of "background Internet radiation" coming 
> from p2p 
> applications which seem to remember their peers for a week or 
> two. These 
> usually account for most of the unidirectional traffic 
> knocking on doors 
> unanswered. (not counting large DDoS).
> 
> Pete

While working on a private network, I captured some packets 
trying to reach off-net destinations.  After the initial panic
that something might be leaking, we figured out that these 
packets were being generated by applications which were trying
to communicate with their mother ships for software updates.

These automatic update requests would qualify as junk for 
some, not for others I suppose.