Streaming Explodes During Pandemic, But No System Overload

Akamai Technologies maintains a major international content delivery network. Alex Balford, Akamai’s senior manager for media product marketing, said, “Traffic increased 30% between the end of February and end of March, 10 times greater than the normal month-to-month growth rate that we normally see. To put that into perspective, we saw roughly a year’s worth of growth in a month’s time frame.” In addition to sharply increased traffic, Balford noted something else about COVID-19 data traffic. “Beyond just the sheer volume of traffic is the fact that the increases are both downstream and upstream,” he said. “Normally, when we talk about a big traffic event, it’s a big sporting event or game download being distributed to large audiences. In the case of the pandemic, with so many people working from home in general and people socializing via videoconferencing, traffic is flowing at heightened volumes both ways across the internet.”

Internet service providers are the ones that deliver the last mile of data to homes and businesses, so there has been a lot of concern about their systems being overloaded with the sudden increase in work-at-home traffic and streaming of high-quality broadcast programming to homes. Tony Wener, president of the Technology, Product, Xperience organization within Comcast Cable, said that Comcast has increased its network buildout activities, with 1,700 system work orders one recent week compared to a typical 400-500. These activities include installing more fiber and adjusting system settings to max out the capacity of the network.