2020 Pandemic Network Performance

The report highlights the following findings about internet traffic since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic:

• ISPs saw significant growth in both downstream and upstream traffic, increasing at least 30% and as much as 40% during peak business hours and as much as 60% in some markets.
• The observed increase in traffic volume was not simply a consequence of a shift from organizational networks to residential ones. The shift caused local information resources on organizational sites to become remote ones, accessible only through the Internet. Therefore, net Internet traffic increased.
• Video conferencing traffic, while representative of a small overall percentage of traffic, increased substantially. Some networks saw more than 300% increase in the amount of video conferencing traffic from February to October 2020.
• Applications including gaming, web access and video streaming also saw substantial increases.
• Enterprise and campus networks saw an increase in the use of VPN services, leading in some cases to VPN capacity problems. However, the increase in VPN usage, particularly to campus networks, was less than expected, partially because many of applications are now hosted in the cloud and can be accessed directly rather than exclusively through a private network.
• Transit networks, content delivery networks, and Internet exchange points saw traffic volumes increase by 20-50%.
• Traffic over direct interconnection points also increased significantly. The extent of the increase in traffic demand varied across peers, with growth patterns ranging from modest to more than an order of magnitude or more.
• Traffic ratios between downstream and upstream traffic also shifted as a result of greater upstream consumption, although traffic ratios remained strongly asymmetric, with downstream traffic continuing to far outpace upstream traffic.
• The extent of growth in traffic demand tended to vary by the application or service of the corresponding peer. As a general pattern, ISPs augmented capacity to keep pace with this increase in demand.
• The growth in traffic varied widely by application, interconnect peer, and geographic region.
• There was a significant increase in the purchase of new consumer devices, including tablets and laptops, in some cases (e.g., webcams) outpacing supply of these devices.
• Some providers saw modest and temporary decreases in downstream traffic speeds, especially during earlier parts of 2020. Overall median download speeds decreased by less than 5%, while remaining above advertised speeds. Latency also increased modestly and temporarily for certain providers.
• Home Wi-Fi networks, in particular those with customer supplied home gateways and/or Wi-Fi access points, experienced performance challenges often due to the combined effects of increased traffic demand, a larger number of connected devices, and outdated devices and home network equipment.