Impact of Corona: Internet traffic sets new records in 2021

Consuming Netflix and playing video games has certainly helped many of us to make the pandemic lockdown a little more bearable. Thanks to published statistics from “DE-CIX”, we now have it in black and white that we were obviously not the only ones whose Internet consumption increased during the time. Thus, the Internet hubs have established a new record in the field of Internet traffic with more than 38 exabytes of exchanged data.

Surge

Looking at the data flows, a significant increase is already evident between the years 2019 and 2020. In 2021, the whole thing increased by another 20 percent. Now, anyone who has problems with large numbers, like me, won’t be able to do much with 38 exabytes. Accordingly, the operator of the DE-CIX Internet hub has chosen an illustrative example. The amount of data exchanged is roughly equivalent to 300 million smartphones, each with a storage capacity of 128 GB. At peak times in 2021, the operator recorded a data throughput of an impressive 11 terabits per second.

Corona as an Internet engine

You don’t have to be a statistician to see quite clearly a confluence of Corona and increased Internet usage. This trend continues even now that government measures have been significantly relaxed. According to DE-CIX, this is by no means a purely German phenomenon. Globally, the use of the World Wide Web has experienced a substantial upswing since the Corona pandemic became rampant. This is also confirmed by DE-CIX’s Global Head of Products & Research Christoph Dietzel:

“Data traffic overall worldwide has stabilized at a high level in 2021 after the outbreak of the pandemic and the record chase in 2020 and continues to grow steadily.”

Seasonal Differences

It becomes particularly exciting once a comparison is made between different periods of the year. In the spring of 2021, for example, video conferences resulting from home offices in particular ensured extremely high data throughput. In the following summer, however, it was leisure activities that caused the Internet lines to glow. Streaming in particular was a big topic here, which can be seen not least in the great success of Netflix, Disney+ & Amazon Prime Video. Autumn and winter, in turn, helped the online gaming sector with a decent upswing.