Network insights: The Christmas No1 for Internet Traffic is....
Everyone loves a countdown at this time of year – whether it's counting down the days until Santa arrives (if you’ve been good!), the hours left until you can put your out-of-office email on or waiting to find out who gets that coveted Christmas number one song in the charts.
With that in mind and with 5 days to go until Christmas Day, I thought I would share our top five winners in terms of which websites and platforms that were the most used on Talk Talk’s network this year from a peak consumption perspective.
Bandwidth Usage
Overall, it's been a huge year for bandwidth usage. Our peak so far in December is 4.4tbps or 4,400gbps. So, what can 4.4tbps deliver?
Well to put it in context, it's the same as downloading roughly 164,000 copies of Wizzard's ‘I Wish It Could be Christmas Everyday’ every second. Or downloading 281 copies of the movie Elf - in HD, every second. That’s a lot of festive cheer!
In reverse order, here are the top five sites most used on TalkTalk’s network:
Number 5 - Amazon
The number 5 spot in our Christmas countdown goes to the Amazon website and Prime Video. Amazon continues to be very popular and a consistent driver of network usage as people watch the Grand Tour and other content whilst ordering Prime Next Day deliveries.
Number 4 - Microsoft Patch Tuesday
Microsoft Patch Tuesday – All of those millions of PCs downloading the latest patches each week shows the incredible demand out there to keep our devices updated and secure.
Number 3 - YouTube
YouTube makes it into our top three – and while it has dropped down on our chart, it remains extremely popular for delivering all forms of video from music videos to clips of cats falling off sofas – yes, it's all on YouTube.
Number 2 ** NEW ENTRY ** Fortnite
While it Just misses out on the top spot, it's been an amazing year for our new entry this year. Fortnite - the game that introduced Flossing to the nation - is at number two. I wrote earlier in the year about the huge growth in Fortnite and the importance of optimising for Gaming usage. It will be interesting to see if the number one game worldwide continues its popularity in the new year.
Number 1 - Netflix
Our Christmas number 1 may come as no surprise to many of you is Netflix. Regardless of whether you're binging on the latest series of The Crown, watching Christmas movies on your laptop, smart TV, mobile phone or indeed games console, Netflix continues to drive our highest use of the network week-on-week.
Congratulations to Netflix!
I hope you enjoyed these insights into our network. On behalf of everyone at TalkTalk, have a fantastic Christmas and thanks for an incredible 2018.
