My monthly guest blog post is up at broadbandgenie.co.uk. World cup stuff.
Tag: World Cup
Global content delivery network Akamai is showing its UK traffic today as 21.3% of the global internet traffic. Whilst it isn’t true to extrapolate this to say that the UK represents 21.3% of all global internet traffic today it is a reasonable indicator as to the UK share of overall usage.
This is certainly being seen at Timico where our streaming traffic is up 357% which is even higher than yesterday’s reported budget watching traffic. This was itself a record 309% increase. Twitter is struggling this afternoon and the live football stream from the BBC on my 100Mbps connection is not great so – now you know why.
Photo below is a screenshot showing global network hotspots.
Wimbledon doesn’t appear to be starting online until 14.40hrs. The budget speech is online, the England v Australia 1 day cricket match is online, there is no World Cup football until 15.00hrs. So what eh?
So video streaming has hit another high. It is up 309% on the norm. The World Cup has seen a 171% increase so many more people are interested in the budget than in the world cup.
All the recent major political events have seen large spikes in internet traffic online. This goes back to Obama’s inauguration, the last budget speech under the Labour government and the day after Polling Day in the recent general election, which was in itself a local maximum, to use my A Level maths.
Fortunately for ISPs the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cronies are a fairly static lot. In other words the only bit of moving is the occasional waving of an order paper (or whatever they call them in Parliament – “The Dandy” probably). This means that the bandwidth usage hasn’t gone up in proportion to the number of users online in the way that it does for the sport. Movement means change which means lots of bandwidth usage when it comes to video streaming.
Tomorrow is the biggie. The last England Group match and one that they have to win. It’s all there: passion, excitement, intrigue, dissent, highs, lows, vuvuzelas, tears and tattoos but no romance – the WAGS have stayed away.
Read all about it on trefor.net. Order, order! No hang on the budget speech has finished. Everyone has started doing some work again.
At work I have a 100Mbps of uncontended bandwidth to play with. It does me. I thought I’d watch some sport this afternoon, in between stuff. This was partly because I drew Chile in the office sweepstake – they are playing Switzerland as I write – and partly because I’m taking one of my lads to Wimbledon on Thursday – centre court – keep an eye out for me in the crowd.
Both sports are being covered on BBC iPlayer this afternoon. I can of course watch both at the same time – and that’s despite being a bloke (or is it because of it?) –
When I first started looking at SNOM phones, perhaps 9 years ago, they were not very impressive. The handset was easy to knock off its cradle and the voice was tinny.
The phone firmware was impressive and the fact that SNOM was a very early runner in the SIP market is to their great credit. SNOM is an entrepreneurial business.
The fact that SNOM is still around is also hugely to their credit and their handsets have come on in dramatic leaps and bounds. The quality of the plastics has improved and their expertise in software still comes clearly to the fore.
You can tell which teams hold the most interest based on how busy the network is on any afternoon this week.
It all started with England’s warm up game last week. Quite a few people watched that online but not as many as watched the Opening ceremony. Yesterday’s Spain v Switzerland match is the most popular to date.
1 Wednesday 16th Spain v Switzerland
2 Friday 11th South Africa v Mexico
3 Tuesday 15th New Zealand v Slovakia
4 Tuesday 15th Ivory coast v Portugal
5 Monday 14th Netherlands v Denmark
6 Monday 14th Japan v Cameroon
7 Friday 11th Opening Ceremony
8 Wednesday 16th Honduras v Chile
9 England pre-tournament friendly
9 Thursday 17th Greece v Nigeria
9 Thursday 17th Argentina v South Korea
This doesn’t look at evening matches which I imagine most people will watch on their TV or in the pub. It is also only based on Timico’s network so other ISPs may have different rankings (for what it’s worth – there is no money changing hands here – yet).
Just a bit of fun.
The broadband ISP industry woke up yesterday morning to a spike on their collective networks. I had people down to my office asking whether the World Cup had started a new trend in online TV watching. It undoubtedly reinforces the trend but this time the bandwidth rush was due to a Microsoft Update and not the football.
The football is starting to have an effect though – viewing figures during the opening ceremony were up around 30% over normal video watching. This didn’t have any ill effects on the quality of the experience at least at my end.
30 minutes into the opening game between the Hosts South Africa the score remains nil nil and the video traffic has grown by about 60% above the norm. This is not as many people as were watching the shennanigans the day after the general election (although it almost is). But this is not England playing here…
Just to remind readers the concern is that online viewing is going to flood the internet and affect regular users. Warnings have been issued by many ISPs and content providers. Looks like our pipes are ok at the moment although as predicted we have hit a record high in terms of bandwidth usage. If you are making a VoIP call or sending email etc you should still be fine.
You do wonder at Microsoft’s timing though, releasing an update just before the biggest demand event the internet will have seen to date. I guess there are geeks everywhere. Football? What’s football?
The broadband ISP industry woke up yesterday morning to a spike on their collective networks. I had people down to my office asking whether the World Cup had started a new trend in online TV watching. It undoubtedly reinforces the trend but this time the bandwidth rush was due to a Microsoft Update and not the football.
The football is starting to have an effect though – viewing figures during the opening ceremony were up around 30% over normal video watching. This didn’t have any ill effects on the quality of the experience at least at my end.
30 minutes into the opening game between the Hosts South Africa the score remains nil nil and the video traffic has grown by about 60% above the norm. This is not as many people as were watching the shennanigans the day after the general election (although it almost is). But this is not England playing here…
Just to remind readers the concern is that online viewing is going to flood the internet and affect regular users. Warnings have been issued by many ISPs and content providers. Looks like our pipes are ok at the moment although as predicted we have hit a record high in terms of bandwidth usage. If you are making a VoIP call or sending email etc you should still be fine.
You do wonder at Microsoft’s timing though, releasing an update just before the biggest demand event the internet will have seen to date. I guess there are geeks everywhere. Football? What’s football?
I walked in this morning to find that the wallpaper in the office had changed overnight. Being Welsh and with no real interest in the football World Cup other than the fact that I have drawn Chile in the office sweepstake it took me a bit by surprise. Having said that everyone is excited and the whole tournament (at this early stage before anyone has been knocked out) has lifted everyone’s spirits.
The video below is a quick scan around the office to show off the decor. The bit at the beginning is where the Network Operations team sits. Note no flags here. They are all uber-geeks who care only about tech stuff and are only vaguely aware that there is a sport called football. They will still celebrate a win with everybody though. Work hard and play hard.
I walked in this morning to find that the wallpaper in the office had changed overnight. Being Welsh and with no real interest in the football World Cup other than the fact that I have drawn Chile in the office sweepstake it took me a bit by surprise. Having said that everyone is excited and the whole tournament (at this early stage before anyone has been knocked out) has lifted everyone’s spirits.
The video below is a quick scan around the office to show off the decor. The bit at the beginning is where the Network Operations team sits. Note no flags here. They are all uber-geeks who care only about tech stuff and are only vaguely aware that there is a sport called football. They will still celebrate a win with everybody though. Work hard and play hard.
Timico’s video traffic grew by around 30% when England were playing their pre tournament “friendly” football match in South Africa yesterday.
ISPs have been speculating as to what might happen during the tournament itself and especially on June 23rd which is England’s first midweek daytime match. At the recent LINX meeting in London it was suggested that the BBC is