Talk that the mass self-isolation of Europeans has increased the load on the 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 over, others say that the figures are around 20 percent. True, at least for the TIER-1 hub in Amsterdam, it turned out to be 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 video quality for users in the UK and Switzerland, and after that across the EU and the world. Other video hosting and streaming services began to take the same measures, primarily Netflix and Twitch.
However, no source specifically indicated what kind of data streams they are talking about, although all mention a sharp increase in load.
If we turn to the statistics of AMS-IX, one of the largest backbone providers in the EU with a main node in Amsterdam, the picture begins to clear up.
To begin with, it is worth noting that the upward trend in channel consumption among users began to form at the end of last year, which fit into the paradigm of the 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 in two or three years, arose right here and now. Here is the AMS-IX graph, which reflects the dynamics of the load on the provider's nodes over the past year:
These are statistics on 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 in Europe.
If you look closely at the image above, you can see confirmation of the earlier thesis that not only the coronavirus is to blame for Internet congestion: the channel’s consumption growth dynamics became obvious back in October-November 2019, when the virus had not yet been detected even in China. Moreover, over the month, from October to November, traffic increased by ~15% or ~0,8 Tb/s, from ~4,2 Tb/s to 5 Tb/s.
Now there are no surprises on the channel's daily consumption charts. The increase in load coincides with daylight hours, and its peak occurs 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 backdrop of the current situation with self-isolation, the day of the week has ceased to affect the consumption of the channel by users in Europe. From the almost identical weekly load schedules, only Tuesday is knocked out - on this day people sit online a little more than on other days. The peaking of the load lasted a little longer last Sunday:
And, in fact, the monthly load schedule for AMS-IX networks:
Some “experts” attribute the increase in network load to the transition of people to remote work, but this is not entirely correct. Everyone who has used Zoom or other VoIP knows how negligible the load on the channel is in videoconferencing mode: Skype, Zoom or other applications have never set themselves the goal of producing a FullHD picture at a high bitrate. Their task is purely utilitarian - to give the opportunity to see and hear the interlocutor, there is no question of any high quality and load on the modern channel. Rather, PornHub generates more traffic with its subscriber promotions than all remote workers across the European continent combined.
A more realistic scenario is when YouTube and Netflix, mentioned at the beginning of the article, provide the main load, which is clearly seen in the graphs that soar vertically upwards 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 bed.
In general, networks have to cope with the increased load, and the current situation will only spur providers to upgrade both the backbone and the “last mile” infrastructure, because ADSL and xADSL broadband access are still popular in the EU, which is almost barbaric for 2020, and 3 -4G can no longer cope.
You might think that now the quality of communication is being pressured not only by constant, but by peak loads: for the first time in history, European networks have encountered 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 common for providers, and all our problems are rather in the total amount of data, and not 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 stable Internet traffic on the continent five years ago, but such “spurts” of load were almost always. Here is a chart from DE-CIX, another major EU highway from Frankfurt, one of the two largest hubs in continental Europe on a par with Amsterdam:
As you can see, the peak load on the DE-CIX networks in 2015 was about 4 Tb/s, while the average load was only 2 Tb/s. If we linearly extrapolate the situation, then logically, with an average load of 6 Tb / s, modern 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 is this happening? It is difficult to answer unequivocally, this is a question for experts on backbone networks.
Source: habr.com