AMS-IX breaks through 9 Tbps barrier

The new peak traffic is most likely a result of the growth of the Amsterdam platform. During the last couple of months, a lot of networks have been upgrading their port capacity to handle their traffic growth. The cold, rainy autumn weather is most probably also a factor since people stay indoors when the weather worsens. From the comfort of their homes, people tend to use more Internet services like video games or video streaming.

The lockdown and containment measures of European governments also play a role. A lot of countries have restrictions like an evening clock, closed restaurants and cancelled events, which contributes to people staying at home. Over 875 networks are connected to the Amsterdam interconnection hub, 75% of them are of European origin.

“This peak underlines the critical role AMS-IX has as digital mainport for Internet traffic across the globe,” says AMS-IX CEO Peter van Burgel. ”We saw tremendous growth in Internet traffic last year. In December last year, we reached a peak traffic of 7 Terabits per second, and in less than a year we’ve topped this with 2 terabits more. We live in uncertain times, but you can be sure of one thing: Internet traffic is always growing.”

9 Terabits per second accounts for astronomical amounts of data traffic. It corresponds to:

• Simultaneous streaming of 1,800,000 HD (1080p) videos
• 469 hours of HD (1080p) video streaming (2,4 GB) all transmitted in one second
• Simultaneous streaming 360,000 4K videos
• 94 hours of 4K video’s (12 GB) all transmitted in one second
• The transmission of a little under than 220 millions of typed A4 pages (in one second)
• The transmission of almost 195.000 volumes of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare” (in one second)
• The simultaneous streaming of 225 billion typists who can type 300 characters a minute