Tumblr is now a major force in generating broadband traffic on the Internet. The snapshots below reflect the amazing growth in traffic to Tumblr. A brief look from one North American Fixed Line ISP reflects the massive growth in popularity of Tumblr, even eclipsing facebook.com in total traffic (even if fbcdn.net is added, Tumblr still wins by a huge margin). The first number represents the amount of traffic daily to the site, and the second is the number of connections daily.

December 2011

May 2013

As you can see, Tumblr has experienced massive growth, with a five-fold increase in traffic over the time period . Tumblr’s own stats show that they have over 108M blogs on the site, with many of the blogs very active with a huge amount of daily views (again, views up almost 5x as well). From a traffic point of view, Tumblr ranks second overall on this ISP, with only YouTube generating more traffic daily, as shown below.

This trend is consistent on both Fixed and Mobile deployments that we see this pattern across our deployment footprint. Interestingly enough, most operators don’t complain about this as much as they do video traffic, and here is why:

As you can see, the amount of video traffic is about 76 times more than the total amount of traffic from Tumblr (although Tumblr is actually generating some of this traffic as they embed YouTube and other videos on the blogs). Now Yahoo just has to figure out how to monetize the site, as Google has proven can be done with advertising as well as the new pay channels for YouTube.

Good luck to Yahoo in their quest to get eyeballs, and we will keep an eye on if this acquisition negatively affects the traffic to Tumblr.

PSY released his new single on YouTube over the weekend, and it is already off to a big start. It has over 62 million views (not quite a billion yet!):

The question for broadband operators – did it effect their usage over the weekend?

The answer is “Probably not” unless you were in specific places. A survey of our customer base in North America, South America, Europe and the Middle East did not see an overall rise in traffic (specifically video or YouTube). But APAC did see an increase – both on a day-over-day basis as well as over recent days.

In one Southeast Asian mobile operator, YouTube traffic peaked 10% higher on the weekend from a normal weekend. Not massive, but significant.

A fixed broadband network much closer to PSY’s home base was up even higher – with an increase of 30% over normal for HTTP Media streaming (preferred by Apple Devices).

Consumer broadband networks were not the only ones that were affected – one South Korean university’s traffic was up almost 50% for the past weekend compared to earlier this month (although to be fair video consumption at the university has been creeping up since the beginning of April).

It would be interesting to dig deeper into the stats to see which versions of the video are generating the most traffic. (unfortunately we did not have that setup on these networks, although it is possible). YouTube is offering seven different versions of the video (shown below):

YouTube and other content providers are becoming very good at presenting the optimum resolution for videos served to different devices – ensuring that both the correct format (i.e. Flash Video versus MP4) and the correct resolution is offered initially. This should have a very positive effect on bandwidth usage and optimization of bandwidth used by video, especially during times of congestion or for mobile subscribers trying to minimize usage to avoid cost.

We’ll keep watching to see how this becomes popular over time.

Go ahead – watch the video – you know you want to!

Well, I binge viewed the entire season (and I really enjoyed it!) – it is my favorite way to watch TV shows. It is one of the things I love the most about Netflix – the ability to watch an entire TV series (or occasionally a season) episode after episode is instant satisfaction – especially if you have not seen the shows before. What happens in the next episode? Find out in 10 seconds! Cliff hangers are immediately resolved!

And it appears I was not the only one. Although Netflix traffic levels on the North American networks that Procera monitors did not go up significantly over the weekend, we were able to distinguish the House of Cards traffic from other Netflix traffic.  On one broadband network, 11% of Netflix subscribers watched at least one episode of the series. Below is a chart from Saturday on a second network (which is when most binge viewing occurred):

Although each episode was not a major factor in overall traffic on this network (especially since the episodes are ~50 minutes long), in aggregate they add up. It is clear that the first few episodes were the most heavily watched, but the later episodes got their fair share of action. We even saw one subscriber on a network that consumed 16G of his usage on House of Cards over the weekend (hmm, how would that affect broadband caps?)

On a different network, House of Cards spiked almost up to 5% of overall Netflix bandwidth usage as shown below (we started monitoring late in the day on Friday):

Was the series launch a success for Netflix? Time will tell, but I really enjoyed the series and I think it reflected well that it got the “launch” ratings that it did. The question is if the series will have longevity with the binge viewing or not, and Netflix will surely be watching the replays of the show over time with the other new series that they have In the works (which I am really looking forward to some more Arrested Development!)

As you might expect with a room full of geeks and salespeople, the application, website, and device mix was interesting. Since most of Procera uses Apple laptops, the results are not terribly surprising, but the interesting statistic that jumps out is how many Android phones were connected to WiFi (that would be all the roamers from overseas) versus iPhones. (The Windows systems MUST have been sales people….!)

The web traffic at the site was quite varied, with almost 1500 unique sites visited on the network and a number of countries represented (although surprisingly few considering the number of countries attending the meeting).

In terms of site popularity, Facebook was the most popular site visited (especially people uploading photos of the conference while it was going on). And our new Canadian team members flexed their muscles a bit, making a hockey site (themackreport.com) one of the most popular at the conference.

We were also testing the ContentLogic product at the meeting, and the results mirrored the web results quite nicely. This is just a taste of what is to come, as we have big plans for what we are going to offer with this product, and it is not just your standard content database!

Not so surprisingly with a team of engineers, much of the application traffic was VPN traffic (The most common usage was VPN traffic into customer networks to monitor systems or to give customer demonstrations). FLICKA is the Procera protocol for our Real-Time Monitoring Application (LiveView). There were over 100 different applications used during the conference, and although they did not make the top 10, there were a lot of OTT VOIP/Video applications – including Skype, Viber, Line, Spotify, Pandora, and plenty of streaming video.

There are a lot of interesting events coming over the next few months (like the Superbowl), and we will be kicking AIM back into high gear over this time. Stay Tuned!

A GigaOM post details how Amazon is the leader for Black Friday, with almost double the number of users as eBay. A report from  CNN claims that practically “all” adults went shopping over the weekend (anyone over 14) either online or at retail outlets. Various reports show that smartphones were used more than tablets, and an IBM report shows that the iPad was the greatest generator of tablet sales by a long shot.

A look at some of our customer sites shows that the volume of traffic to some of the popular websites definitely was higher than normal, as much as 50% higher in terms of volume. From a bandwidth perspective, the traffic was insignificant, totally less than 1% of overall traffic.

This is a look at the first part of the shopping frenzy from Tuesday to Thanksgiving Day from different sites in the US:

Market 2

As you can see, Amazon is the clear leader in both cases, however Best Buy did not do badly either. eBay and Walmart were also successful in generating traffic. Remember that most of this traffic volume is driven by product images, so sites that had more images and larger ones would benefit in this evaluation by using more bandwidth as a result. Product videos are even better!

Then Black Friday through Cyber Monday hit:

Market 2

As you can see, the volume of traffic in both cases went up significantly on Black Friday (nearly doubled), even though it was still a very small overall percentage. The interesting spike for the second market during the middle of the day for Best Buy indicated a specific deal must have attracted interest. Drilling into that specific case:

The deal hit from 12:30 until a little past 3:00 in the afternoon. You can also see that traffic for all of the sites built over time during the day.

Taking a look at one of the sites across the week before and this week, you can see a building over time as the shopping urge hit consumers.

So, did the shopping craze impact networks? Yes, but not as much from a traffic perspective as much as a continuing reminder of the importance of good, fast broadband. I personally saw several instances as I was shopping on Amazon looking for their Instant Deals, where some deals literally came active and disappeared in a matter of seconds. If you had slow or high latency broadband, you might have missed out on some great deals – and Santa wouldn’t like that!

Good luck shopping for the rest of the holiday season.

President Obama’s tweet after he won the election set retweet records, and Twitter in general had a great deal of activity. My Facebook account was covered with people asking their friends to vote (usually for “their” choice for office), but in general just encouraging people to exercise their right to vote. This election was very significant in terms of “getting out the vote”, and both campaigns used social media effectively, and used celebrity tweets and surrogates to push people to vote and debate the issues. The first debate, set it’s own records and had a great effect on broadband networks in the US.

I will have some more data as the day goes one that I will add to this blog post, but here are the snapshots that we have so far:

North American Fixed Broadband Network 1:

A look at one specific fixed line deployment in the US shows how interest in news and social networking sites spiked as the election became close to hitting the magic 270 electoral, and finally being called in favor of President Obama. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and news sites in general increased as polls closed around the country and the election results rolled in:

As I was enjoying optionally subtitled movies (Swedish, Danish and Norwegian options if I recall correctly) on my iPad over the hotel Wi-Fi, I decided to take a look and see if Netflix is being used on the mobile networks in Sweden. There are some pretty hefty sized volume plans available in Sweden (I have seen ones as high as 80GB per month), which is plenty of data room for video streaming. Sure enough, there is quite a bit of Netflix on the mobile networks, but it is still just getting started. The graph below shows the differnet device types and a comparison of the volume of Netflix used per device:

Mobile Broadband dongles lead the way (as they do on most networks worldwide), but the iPhone and iPad have a very solid presence on the list, as does a Samsung and HTC handset. As a percentage of total traffic, Netflix is still small (and smaller than file sharing in Scandinavia), but it will be interesting to see how this grows over time. I have always been an believer that finding a way to make your content available on-line is the best way to prevent or minimize piracy, and we will continue to watch as Netflix expands and how that affects the rate of file sharing in different countries.

Twitter summarized their comments on the debate:

“As conversation on the Denver stage and on Twitter ranged from Medicare to Big Bird, there were more than 10 million Tweets this evening, making this first of the 2012 presidential debates the most tweeted-about event in U.S. politics. The specific moments that generated the most discussion on Twitter were:

-Moderator Jim Lehrer quips “Let’s not” when Governor Romney requests a topic
-President Obama quips “I had 5 seconds” when Lehrer gives time limit
-The discussion about Medicare and vouchers”

The chart below plots the pulse of conversation throughout the debate:

What we saw was very similar. Below are graphs gathered from data from a single provider on how Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix reacted to the debates. The debates were popular enough to have people switch off Netflix and watch, whether that was live or through streaming. They also interacted extensively with Facebook and Twitter, as shown by the broadband activity, peaking at key times during the debate, as well as after the debates for people to put forth their opinions. All of the “social” outlets spiked during the event, and Netflix dipped during the event, and then spiked after as people decided that they needed some entertainment after the seriousness of the debate.

Twitter:

Facebook:

YouTube

Netflix:

This is a very “social” election, and broadband is more important than ever in consumer’s routine. Consumers crave good broadband connections, with high Quality of Experience and capable of delivering streaming media and social networking to their devices.

We will watch to see if the follow-up debates have the same kind of impact on network activity. I would not expect as avid of an audience, but if the election tightens up as a result of this debate, all bets are off.

Procera has been working with a number of mobile operators in the Middle East, and our findings are that the usage patterns for Middle Eastern mobile operators is similar to other regions, but that the number of “power users” is much lower – which usually translates to a lower number of smartphones and mobile broadband dongles. The statistics below represent an aggregation of that data across specific operators that Procera is working with. We believe strongly that “All network trends are local”, and detailed analytics on YOUR network are what help network operators build profitable service models, and encourage operators to gain insight into their subscriber’s behavior before creating new services.

However, many trends in the Middle East have similar traffic distributions as other regions. For example, the domains visited on Middle Eastern mobile networks are very similar to what you might see on mobile networks around the world. The chart below shows the top sites visited over the past two months on the mobile network, from a traffic as well as total number of connections:

It is not a surprise that Facebook, Google (including local versions of Google), and several CDNs (Amazon and Akamai) lead the way in total traffic volume – which shows that content really is king in the Middle East as well as the rest of the world. From a connections point of view, Facebook is still the number one by far, with Zynga making an appearance as a social gaming powerhouse, and Google maintaining a strong position due to searches and advertising.

From an application point of view, Streaming Video is at the top of the heap from an overall bandwidth usage as well for different types of applications used by mobile subscribers.

Drilling down into specific applications, Streaming Media applications again take top honors, but as seen by Facebook’s position in the website table, HTTP browsing is not far behind.

Drilling down into Streaming Video specifically, Flash Video (for non-IOS phones) and HTTP Media Streaming (used primarily by IOS) are the top applications, which is consistent with other regions that do not have Netflix or similar video streaming services..

The Middle East is a rapidly growing mobile data market, and many operators are reporting mobile data traffic growth in excess of 100% a year (even with penetration passing 100%!). The introduction of LTE into many countries will only increase that growth, and the ability of the mobile operators to create service plans targeted to consumer application and content trends will increase their revenue AND enhance subscriber satisfaction.

A new game is taking North American broadband networks by storm – before it even launches. Guild Wars 2, a MMO that wants to take on World of Warcraft and other popular MMOs on the PC, officially ships today for PC players everywhere. However, it is already having an effect on broadband networks in North America. The game has been in beta for some time, and over the past two weeks, has steadily climbed the traffic charts to be one of the top domains across North America in terms of overall traffic – passing even YouTube.com and Facebook.com on some days.

The chart above shows the growth of traffic to the arenanetworks.com domain over the past three weeks. As you can see, there are spikes on the weekends, but the traffic over the past week has really jumped as players start to take full advantage of the game. With the full launch being today, we expect the traffic volumes to go up even higher, maybe even touching a few % of overall traffic (right now the level is less than 1%, but on some networks it is threatening to reach 1%). It has even exceeded on many of these networks the volume of traffic destined to playstation.net, which is always an active gaming destination.

Who said PC gaming was dead?