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The not-for-profit London Internet Exchange (LINX), which handles a large chunk of UK and global data traffic through their switches via around 900+ members (broadband ISPs, mobile and CDN providers etc.), has revealed that last week’s UEFA Champions League, European League and Conference League games drove a new global internet traffic peak of over 12.069Tbps across the UK, US, Africa and Middle East.
During the football matches, LINX said they saw a new peak of 9.293Tbps (Terabits per second) at its LON1 interconnection hub in London, supporting large Content Delivery Network (CDN) members. LINX’s new peak is said to reflect the continued shift toward internet-first broadcasting, where OTT platforms, broadcasters, CDNs, ISPs and cloud providers are increasingly working together to deliver a better end-user experience.
The new maximum traffic peak across the LINX network also followed a new all-time traffic level in Riyadh, where LINX powers IXPs (Internet Exchanges) for center3. The exchange in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, hit 1Tbps of traffic, proving its popularity as a hub for content in the Middle East.
Jennifer Holmes, LINX CEO, said:
“Surpassing an aggregate peak of over 12Tbps across all LINX-run IXPs is a milestone that highlights both the continued growth potential of our industry and the strength of our community. While the UK itself played a pivotal role in driving this peak, this achievement has been supported by our strategic focus in regions beyond the UK as we continue to see new peaks in Africa, North America and the IXPs we power in the Middle East.”
We should point out that LINX does not provide a complete overview of the internet traffic flow from all ISPs, but they do give a useful indication of how much extra traffic is flowing around when compared with normal conditions. Demand for data is of course constantly rising and broadband connections are forever getting faster, thus new peaks of usage are being set all the time.