Exactly the same here too. As a teenager we also all pitched in on a CD burner when they first came out and kept it at the BBS’s owners place, I just remember a single CD took forever back then when it was 1x and 2x recording speed. That allowed us to share a ton more without everyone having to get together on the LAN.
Wireshark won’t show you anything if it’s encrypted, other then a communication taking place. There’s nothing stopping them from batching or otherwise obfuscating things through all kinds of means.