I mean, I tend to think it probably should count, but there's a valid argument to be made that it's not really inter-net traffic if it's inside a single (ISP's) network.
I don’t think that definition of traffic would make sense when talking about inter-state highways, for instance, although I wish it would. My commute would be a lot easier!
the interstate highways of the internet are the exchanges and connections between those. local traffic within an ISP should not hit those exchanges.
just like most local traffic should not need to use an interstate highway. one might even be able to say that if you need to use an interstate, your commute is not really local anymore. actually, i think one could even argue that if a significant amount of local traffic goes over an interstate then the street system is designed wrong (although i admit, i fear that this is quite common). it's like letting a local commuter train use a high-speed rail track. it happens, but it shouldn't.
Also, youtube tends to downgrade the quality from 1080p to lower grades quite aggresively, even when watching on a PC with a fiber connection. Possibly a cost-saving measure?
if i want to watch a longer video at guaranteed quality without buffering, i'll download it first. even if the download is slow, it makes better use of my time because i won't waste time waiting for buffers to fill.
1. Want to read a book, that's effort
2. Maybe watch a show instead. Nah that's a half hour commitment I feel I don't have time for
3. Oh I know! Let's scroll shit on YouTube!
4. Significant amounts of time have passed
almost the same for me, except that if i read a book, i risk spending hours without paying attention to anything else, so no. 2 is also the reason why i don't watch half hour videos on youtube. but 3 and 4 happen anyways occasionally.
the problem is that with a book it's difficult to put down, especially mid-chapter. and with youtube videos i can stop after each video. (<- yeah right!)
solved it with audiobooks and making a list of shows i commit to watching when i have time, but no more than one episode per day.
Prime video for instance has a lot of default subscribers (because a lot of us have Prime) but I don’t think I’ve ever watched anything HD. Most stuff is SD.
Downstream Internet traffic. So if a provider puts Netflix’ CDN box, which they provide for free, on their network, the ‘global traffic’ is next to nothing. It’s just traffic to the customers, which the customers pay for, and no transit that the provider (or Netflix) has to pay for.
