Thanks to a study just released, some sources are theorizing that Netflix, the streaming video service, could have the potential to dominate the internet and gobble up American broadband.  

Netflix currently boasts over 15 million members and according to network management company Sandvine, their 2010 Global Internet Phenomena Report indicates that Netflix accounts for 20 percent of downstream traffic during peak periods beating out YouTube, iTunes, Hulu, and p2p file-sharing.  

The spike in online streaming video users for Netflix appears to have originated from customers in Canada.  The company's traditional DVD-by-mail service was not offered as an option to consumers there, they were only provided with the choice of streaming video.  

In the week following the launch of service to Canadians, 10 percent of Netflix online usage came from that country and video streaming usage numbers will continue to increase in Canada and are expected to rise exponentially in North America overall, according to Sandvine.

In response to the study, one online report suggests that another reason that Netflix may be gaining momentum could stem from the fact that while online users spend only moments at a time on YouTube, they tend to spend hours at a time on Netflix.

Despite growing suggestions that Netflix will stretch broadband capacity to the limit during peak hours, the co-founder of Akamai -- the company that boasts 77,000 servers with hard drives and is responsible for Netflix delivery of content with local servers -- reports that no one should be concerned about a surge of streaming video crashing the internet. 

"That video is growing rapidly and going to be huge is true," said Akamai's Tom Leighton. "But there's tons of capacity out at the edges of the network....plenty of capacity in the last mile to your house."