Only two weeks before Christmas, DE-CIX Frankfurt has hit a new world record. Data throughput broke through another barrier with more than 8.1 Terabits per second, increasing the record value of 7.1 Terabits per second from mid-September 2019 by almost one Terabit.
Time and time again in December, especially on 11 December
With all its Christmas online shopping and people staying more indoors because it’s wintertime – in Europe at least – December can be called the “traffic world record month” at DE-CIX. The 5 Terabits per second milestone was reached on 8 December 2015, the 6 Terabits world record on 11 December 2017, and now, this year, we broke the 8 Terabits all-time traffic peak. And once again, on 11 December.
DE-CIX Frankfurt continues to be the Internet Exchange with the highest data throughput in the world. Generally, the data traffic at Internet Exchanges moves in waves and reflects the daily rhythm of Internet usage, beginning at 6 am and reaching its peak at around 9 in the evening. Seasonal changes – in summer people tend to be online less than in the fall and winter months – can also be registered.
What a Terabit of data per second means
For those who don’t work with bits and bytes everyday, some background information: One Terabit per second, Tbit/s or Tbps, is a dimension for the transmission speed of data. It is 10exp3 Gbit/s, 10exp6 Mbit/s, 10exp9 kbit/s or 10exp12 bit/s, i.e. 1,000,000,000,000 bit/s. The next lowest data rates are measured in Gigabits per second (Gbit/s) and Megabits per second (Mbit/s). 8 Terabits per second corresponds to the simultaneous transmission of up to 1.8 million videos in HD quality or a data volume of approx. 1.8 billion A4 pages of text (a stack of paper close to 200 kilometers high).