Internet traffic in Europe has grown one and a half times. Backbone providers record load records

Talk that mass self-isolation of Europeans has increased the load on Internet infrastructure at all levels has been going on since March, but different sources give different data. Some say that the load has increased many times, while others say about 20 percent. However, in any case, for the TIER-1 hub in Amsterdam, it was somewhere in the middle: according to AMS-IX statistics, the average traffic load increased by about 50%, from 4.0 to 6.0 TB / s.

Back in mid-March, YouTube announced that it was reducing the quality of video for users in the UK and Switzerland, and after that - throughout the EU and the world. Other video hosting and streaming services, primarily Netflix and Twitch, began to take the same measures.

However, not a single source specifically indicated which data streams are in question, although everyone mentions a sharply increased load.

If we turn to the statistics of AMS-IX, one of the largest EU backbone providers with a main hub in Amsterdam, the picture is starting to clear up.

To begin with, it is worth noting that the upward trend in channel consumption among users began to take shape at the end of last year, which fit into the paradigm of development of 4G networks with a further transition to 5G. Quarantine measures, in fact, led to the fact that the load, which was expected by providers and telecom operators only after two or three years, arose right here and now. Here is the AMS-IX chart that reflects the dynamics of the load on the provider nodes over the past year:

These are statistics for all connections and data centers with which the AMS-IX network is connected, that is, these are quite relevant data that show the dynamics of loads across Europe.

If you carefully look at the image above, you can see the confirmation of the earlier thesis that not only coronavirus is to blame for Internet congestion: the dynamics of channel consumption growth became evident in October-November 2019, when the virus was not detected even in China. Moreover, over the month, from October to November, traffic grew by ~ 15% or ~ 0.8 Tb / s, from ~ 4.2 Tb / s to 5 Tb / s.

Now on the daily consumption charts of the channel without surprises. The load growth coincides with daylight, and its peak falls at a time closer to midnight, with a sharp drop to almost zero values ​​in the dead of night:

It is worth noting that against the background of the current situation with self-isolation, the day of the week has ceased to affect the channel consumption by users in Europe. Of the almost identical weekly load schedules, only Tuesday is knocked out - on this day people sit on the net a little more than on other days. A little longer, the load peaking lasted last Sunday:

And, actually, the monthly graph of the load on the AMS-IX network:

Some "experts" attribute the increase in network load to the transition of people to remote work, but this is not entirely correct. Everyone who used Zoom or other VoIP knows how insignificant the load on the channel is in video conferencing mode: Skype, Zoom or other applications never set themselves the goal of delivering FullHD images in high bitrate. Their task is purely utilitarian - to give an opportunity to see and hear the interlocutor, there is no talk of any high quality and load on the modern channel. Rather, PornHub generates more traffic with its shares for subscribers than all remote workers across the European continent combined.

A more realistic scenario is when the main load comes from the YouTube and Netflix articles mentioned at the beginning, which can be clearly seen in the charts that shoot vertically up to 6 Tb / s after the end of the working day. The load lasts just until midnight - the time when most turn off the "movie" and "serial" and go to sleep.

In general, networks must cope with the increased load, and the current situation will only encourage providers to upgrade both the backbone and the infrastructure of the “last mile”, because in the EU ADSL and xADSL broadband are still popular, which for 2020 is almost barbaric, and 3 -4G can not cope.

You might think that now not only constant, but peak loads are putting pressure on the communication quality: for the first time in history, European networks have faced such traffic, and load fluctuations at a point in time are up to 2 Tb / s in prime time, from 6 stable to 8 peak Tb / s.

But in fact, this situation is quite familiar to providers and all our problems lie more in the total amount of data, rather than in fluctuations.

Given the average growth in channel consumption in the region of 20-26% per year, now the peak fluctuations in the EU are comparable to all the stable Internet traffic of the continent five years ago, but such “jerks” of load were almost always. Here is a graph from DE-CIX, another major EU trunk from Frankfurt, one of the two largest hubs of continental Europe along with Amsterdam:

As you can see, the peak load on the DE-CIX networks in 2015 was about 4 Tb / s, while as average they were only 2 Tb / s. If you linearly extrapolate the situation, then logically, with an average load of 6 Tb / s, the current peak should be 10-12 Tb / s. And there is everything for this: the development of streaming services, the penetration of 4G and the Internet into every home. But that did not happen. Peak loads during all five years of DE-CIX observations are + \ - 2 Tb / s, regardless of the size of the stable load on the channel. Why it happens? It is difficult to answer unequivocally, this is a question for experts on backbone networks.

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