This week, internet traffic hit a new record high at around 09:20pm on Wednesday 19th October. Traffic spiked in data usage across the London Internet Exchange (LINX), and it hit a new record of 7.179Tbps which is around 0.89TB/s. The traffic on major ISPs saw huge spikes also.
The main culprit could be down to the return of Premier League football matches on Amazon Prime, which is primarily coming from the internet. Unlike when matches are shown on BBC, there is a mix between internet and terrestrial viewing.
TalkTalk saw a new peak record of 9.105Tbps, (around 1.13 TB/s) at 09:20pm on 19th October. Their previous record was only in April earlier this year, at 8.715Tbps (around 1.08TB/s). To back this data up, the London Internet Exchange (LINX) also saw a peak in traffic around around 09:00pm on the same day. LINX provides transit and peering services for ISPs, mobile phone operators and other entities.
However, all of this data from LINX doesn’t give us the full picture as ISPs peer directly with CDN networks. In some cases, direct with actual companies such as Apple, Google and Amazon. This peering negotiation brings the cost down for both parties, essentially providing free connectivity without the need to use external companies.
Looking at the trends, there are new records for data transfer set all the time now and our demand for content online is only going to increase. New products from Sky, do away with using satellite dishes for content and are now relying on the use of internet instead.