The increased usage of video streaming websites by broadband users makes the policy of network traffic optimisation essential, one expert has suggested.

Dave Caputo, co-founder, president and chief executive of Sandvine, a provider of intelligent broadband network solutions, has emphasised the need to operate a fair usage policy in order to cope with the large amount of bandwidth being consumed.

Mr Caputo commented: "This reinforces the importance of protecting real-time applications that are sensitive to jitter and latency during times of peak usage.

"Effective network traffic optimisation techniques use sophisticated policies that balance network capacity, application requirements and subscriber quality of experience in real-time."

Mr Caputo's comments came in the light of figures released by Sandvine which show that web traffic and streaming videos account for 59 per cent of downstream bandwidth consumption.