When it comes to accessing the Internet at the office, the line between business and personal use has been blurred like never before. 

Most companies are backing down from blocking certain sites mainly because they realize employees who have a little more freedom in an area like this can mean happier and more productive workers. 

Companies might be looking at their policies when it comes to blocking Internet sites again in the future, as it seems as if the sites and applications that take up the most bandwidth are becoming more easily identifiable.

Industry analyst Blue Coat (News - Alert) says there are five sites or applications that are consuming the most bandwidth these days. Most are fairly easy to call, but it bares scrutiny, especially if you run a business that has a high amount of bandwidth running through your routers the last couple of months. 

The top user of bandwidth these days is the 2012 London Olympics. Whether we’re talking about special applications for the iOS or Android or simply watching the games, Blue Coat says this year’s Olympics is due to set world records for WAN and Internet Bandwidth consumption.

YouTube is second on Blue Coat’s list of sites or applications in bandwidth use. The analyst says more than three billion hours of video are watched each month and 72 hours are uploaded per minute. YouTube is owned by Google (News - Alert), but Apple is high on this list as well with their app store and iCloud. 

With a growing number of mobile devices being brought to work , Apple (News - Alert) applications are getting big time bandwidth these days.

Fourth on the list might be surprising for its low rank: networking sites like Facebook and Twitter (News - Alert). New applications like Socialcam are starting to compete with YouTube at least a little, and that means Facebook’s bandwidth haul might increase over the next few years.

The final big-time bandwidth users on this list are the television networks that have allowed online viewing. Whether live or on demand, broadcast networks are getting some serious bandwidth these days and those numbers should only grow in the future.

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