Answer: Netflix

Once upon a time, Americans headed home after a long day at work and tuned in to whatever was on the local stations, the basic cable channels, or, for the lucky, the premium movie channels. What was on was what was on, and you watched it. The advent of the Internet and network advancements capable of supporting streaming video turned that model on its head, and millions of people now come home from work and watch exactly what they want to watch courtesy of a variety of streaming sites and services.

Among all those services, however, there is one that delivers a staggering amount of video every day. Over the last few years Netflix has come to quietly dominate the streaming movie/television market. As of the end of 2012, 33% of the total downstream internet traffic in the United States between the hours of 9PM and 12AM was coming from a Netflix server–by contrast the streaming services offered by Amazon, Hulu, and HBO Go account (collectively) for less than 4% of the total downstream traffic during the same period).