Consumer "Internet Downtime" is Hard to Assess

It is nearly impossible to measure the amount of uptime or downtime any single consumer experiences with internet-based experiences on an annual basis, but we frequently see estimates of app availability, or network or device availability that separately look fairly reasonable, usually in minutes per year when a particular app is not available, for example. 

And that includes planned downtime for major software upgrades or maintenance, for example. And, generally speaking, most of us, most of the time, might agree that our internet-based app experiences are robust. We normally expect them to be there, and to work.

Value Chain Segment	Uptime (%)	Downtime (Minutes per Year)
Network Outages (Average ISP)	99.95%	29.2
Application Downtime (Average)	99.90%	52.56
Device Issues (Estimated)	99.50%	21.9
Total Value Chain Availability	Varies	Varies
Akamai State of the Internet/Connectivity Report	-	2880 - 5760 Minutes (2-4 days)
ThousandEyes	-	4380 - 7200 Minutes (3-5 days)

There are a few caveats. Downtime for planned outages might be greater than we assume, because we are sleeping when those planned outages happen. Also, some apps, networks or devices might be down, but not in use by any single user at any single time, so the “outages” are not experienced. 

In other words, if an outage happens to an app or service I am not using, I do not notice it. A thousand apps I do not use can have lots of outages; I'd never notice. Conversely, I am quite apt to notice an outage of my most-favorite and most-used apps. 

Also, end user experience is not simply a matter of app availability, but all other sources in series, including one’s devices, the internet access and transport networks, data center servers and local power, for example. 

Outages of some magnitude from all of those sources must be combined to derive a full picture of internet experience availability, across all experiences any single user has in a year. 

During a recent planned 48-hour local power outage, I could not use the internet in any AC-powered context. The apps, networks and devices might have been available, but local AC power was not available. Uptime for all the apps, devices and networks might have been quite high, yet my experience of “outage” happened anyhow. 

“Observability” therefore matters. Outages I do not encounter do not matter. Outages caused by local power outages do matter, even when there is no problem with the apps, devices or networks enabling internet experiences. 

The point is that the end user experience of internet-enabled experiences is conditional and cumulative; a function of what one does and doesn’t do, and when, across the full accumulated range of possible failure points.