The sudden adoption of “stay at home” policies in many countries will provide a “stress test” for communications networks at the same time, revealing which networks are resilient, and which are less so. So far, there are few reports of problems, though perhaps it is inevitable that speculation about breaking the internet will prove irresistible storylines.
The real story is the absence of reports about actual service degradation. A few service providers already have released data on the spike in usage.
Verizon reported that between March 12 and March 19, 2020, total voice usage on Verizon networks was up 25 percent, with the primary driver being use of conference call services.
Cisco reports that traffic on the Webex backbone connecting China-based Webex users to their global workplaces has increased as much as 22 times since the Covid-19 outbreak began. During the same time period, Webex also saw four to five times as many users in Japan, South Korea and Singapore, with the average time spent on Webex video meetings doubling among users in those countries.
Mobile voice usage was up 10 percent, while call duration was up 15 percent. Presumably much of that is related to the use of conference calling services. Still, voice traffic requires so little bandwidth that none of that would affect user experience overall.
Virtual private network traffic was up 25 percent and web traffic was up 22 percent.
From March 9 to March 16, 2020, Verizon noted a 75 percent increase in gaming; a 12 percent increase in video streaming and web streaming boosts of just under 20 percent.
On March 19, OpenVault reported that data usage during business hours grew more than 41 percent. Average usage during the 9 am-to-5 pm daypart has risen to 6.3 GB, 41.4 percent higher than the January figure of 4.4 GB.
Peak hour (6 pm–11 pm) usage has risen 17.2 percent from five gigabytes per subscriber in January to 5.87 GB in March.
Overall daily usage has grown from 12.19 GB to 15.46 GB, an increase of 26.8 percent.
European Community networks, on the other hand, might be less resilient, judging by the EC request that streaming services reduce resolution to limit bandwidth consumption.
A new analysis by Nokia also confirms unprecedented growth of internet traffic as a result of government policies keeping workers and students at home because of the Covid-9 virus pandemic.
Most networks have seen 30 percent to 45 percent growth over a year, with Covid-19 period increases of perhaps 20 percent to 40 peak increases, typically in the evening hours over the past four weeks.
“So far, networks appear to be meeting demand, but they were designed to grow that much in a year, not in days,” Nokia says.
The edge and peering links of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) seem to have enough headroom, but there is stress mostly on the aggregation networks and service edge routers, where demand may be reaching capacity maximums, Nokia says.
“We are also seeing unprecedented growth in latency-sensitive applications during business hours,” Nokia says, including 300 percent growth in teleconferencing apps in the United States, and 400 percent growth in gaming.
No comments:
Post a Comment