What happens to the Internet when the entire world changes their behavior at the same time? Internet traffic patterns have been growing and changing for many years. However, the rate at which these traffic patterns changed during the spring of 2020 was unprecedented. So, what did this mean for the Internet, and how did networks manage with the heavy influx of traffic?

It was no secret that human behavior patterns drastically changed due to COVID19, as we have previously stated. As government mandated lockdowns confined people to the safety of their own homes, people needed to find new ways to work, educate, socialize and entertain themselves without setting foot outside. This meant many normal face-to-face interactions needed to be digitalized.

In this post, we explore the effects the lockdown had on network traffic with information provided by the ACM IMC 2020 paper The Lockdown Effect: Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Internet Traffic. This paper, for which BENOCS contributed network insights and data, set out to see exactly how much traffic patterns changed as well as to find out if these patterns were proportionate to the new behaviors as reported in the German media and media in other countries.

By examining data from different network vantage points in Europe: 1 ISP, 3 IXPs and one educational network (which consists of 16 different education institutions) between March and June, 2020. The paper identifies significant changes in traffic volumes from the shift in human behavior and shows how it compares to the expected behavior as stated in the media.

Over the last two decades, Internet user profiles changed significantly but at a steady pace. This gave operators ample time to adjust their networks accordingly. However, the effects of COVID-19 hit the Internet like a great storm, causing traffic levels to flood, thus testing the stability of its infrastructure – as storms typically do. In just a few weeks’ time, ISP and IXP traffic specifically in southern Europe increased more than 20% at the beginning of the forced lock-downs. This traffic shows a steady decrease in May 2020, as those areas began to loosen their lock-down restrictions. Not surprisingly, what they found was a traffic increase by 15-20% with a significant amount of growth during off-peak hour times (weekdays from 8AM-7PM), and mainly in residential areas.

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When looking at the behavior of the traffic, there appeared to be a significant shift, especially on weekdays both during the day and in the evening. In fact, the traffic during this time – typically less utilized ­– began to behave like weekend traffic – typically highly utilized. By testing different vantage points in the European Union, communication, entertainment and social media applications show a strong growth, particularly on weekdays during standard working hours. This tells us that many weekday in-face interactions such as meetings, shopping and schooling were performed at home and online.

The migration of employees into a working from home environment also reflected in network traffic. Due to the influx of employees suddenly working from home, VPN traffic also showed substantial weekday growth, with rates having grown 200% between February and March 2020. The traffic then reduces back to pre-lockdown levels as lock down restrictions loosened and more employees returned to their offices instead of working from home.

Lastly, the academic education network, which is a connection of 16 different networks, shows a drastic change during the lockdown. More specifically, a shift in daily peaks, with behaviors shifting to the middle of the night, thus showing students working from abroad, possibly due to restrictions on entering Germany or even Europe.

Taking all of the information from the vantage points into consideration, we can conclude that the network behaved exactly how one would predict, given how much news coverage at that time focused on the digitalization of work, education and events. How did the ISP fair in all of this? Despite the rise in traffic volumes and the extreme shift in traffic behavior, ISPs, specifically in Germany, have proved the preparedness of their infrastructure. There is no evidence of the increase of traffic impacting Internet operations, despite the 15-20% link capacity increase. However, this is and was easily solved with upgrading and building-out. Additionally, network operators often have plans for spikes in network traffic even long before the COVID-19 outbreak, thus ensuring such volumes would not disrupt their services.

How do network operators know when an upgrade or a build-out is necessary? Network analytics has been around for years, however, now more than EVER has it become a crucial part of routine network operations. As more companies begin to announce their plans to grow their businesses digitally in a post-Corona society, network providers and operators can expect a continuation of rapid traffic growth. In order to guarantee the best quality of service, you need to remain ahead, and the best way to do that is through network Analytics.

The information in this post comes from the paper “The Lockdown Effect: Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Internet Traffic.” To read the full study, please click here.

Since the period when most governments started mandating lockdowns and encouraging social distancing at the beginning of 2020, many network operators, SaaS, OTT providers and CDNs have been reporting unprecedented spikes in traffic volumes and content demand. But what about the other side of the coin? If the demand for the Internet increased, did traffic volumes on every network increase? The answer may surprise you.

In the late winter of 2020, the utilization of the Internet as well as network traffic volumes rose to unprecedented levels on most networks. Although traffic volumes on ISP and mobile operating networks grew, IPX (IP Exchange) networks experience a sharp plunge during the government-mandated lockdowns, despite the billions of Internet users left homebound of several weeks. This happened because IPX networks are used when users are mobile, not stationary.

IPX networks (not to be confused with IXPs) have been a part of the network ecosystem since 2008 for mobile operators and other service providers. Their primary purpose allows for the exchange of Internet Protocol traffic securely and at the expected quality of service to provide reliable Internet access for mobile users outside of their home country. This is especially prevalent on continents such as the Europe, where users cross country (and network) borders regularly, but still use the mobile data of their home country provider. For example, a French mobile data user can travel in Spain (within the Spanish network), and still receive service with the same or similar quality as if they were still in their home (French) network. Additionally, IPX networks make handling roaming easier for operators due to its multilateral or bilateral interconnection. This means that IPX providers to some extent either handle the contract and connectivity for operators or allow operators to sort that out among themselves.

One of the most significant outcomes of the COVID19 lockdowns is the new demand for Internet services. In order to maintain a sense of “normality”, most everyday activities moved online, which challenged the sustainability of many network operators and content providers. For that reason, it has become more crucial for network operators to have excellent visibility and knowledge of network traffic behavior.

At BENOCS, we offer network analytics solutions for ISP and IPX networks. Our solutions are backed by powerful data to allow you and your team the visibility you need to make informed decisions about your network operations. To learn more about our analytics products, please click here.

COVID19 proved to be a challenge for Internet Service Providers (ISPs). As countries began locking-down, consumer demand for the Internet surged, flooding the network pipelines. However, despite these challenges, the Internet managed maintain its strength.

Whether it is due to mandatory lock-downs and quarantines or simply following the advice to stay home, end-users all over the world are finding new ways to stay entertained and connected with one another while maintaining social distance. During the global pandemic – COVID 19 – that struck at the end of 2019 and early 2020, more people than ever began moving their lives into the virtual realm. Schools, work places, social gathering, conferences, leisure activities, etc., which would normally rely very little on the Internet, have moved substantially to the Internet in an attempt to keep functioning. On top of that, staying indoors meant that many relied on streaming services more than ever to keep themselves entertained. For the Internet, this meant an unprecedented increase of traffic in a very short amount of time. In Germany alone, where citizens faced a loose lock-down/contact ban – meaning citizens could go outside for solo activities but needed to keep 1.5 meters distance from everyone – network patterns changed to being highly utilized almost all of the time.

Before countries and states began COVID19 lock-downs, the Internet usually carried the most traffic during typical leisure times i.e. evenings (6PM to 10PM), weekends, and public holidays. A much lower amount of traffic was distributed during normal working hours (8AM-6PM).  However, during the loose lock-down/contact ban in Germany, which started in March 23^rd, 2020, network operators saw a significant increase in internet traffic during workday hours and weekends, revealing that people were supplementing face-to-face activities, such everyday office conversations, school attendance, and social activities as well entertainment with online versions. This induced much longer periods of heavy network utilization.

If we look at the figure above, we can compare pre-COVID19 traffic patterns with the traffic patterns sampled during the loosened lock-down to understand how user behavior changed. We see that, since 2018, most traffic in Germany behaved according to the assigned days ­– weekends behaved like weekends and weekdays behaved like weekdays – with a few exceptions. However, if we look at the period between the end of March and the beginning of June, we can see that traffic patterns for specific days no longer fall within their respective categories. Instead, we see that most of the days falls into the holiday category – a day associated with heavy utilization.

With most of the days during the loose lock-down/contact ban in Germany falling into the holiday category, we conclude that people are supplementing the usual face-to-face and outdoor activities with internet-based versions. Speaking with colleagues, attending classes or chatting with friends, as well as streaming videos and games all add more traffic to the network.

As scientist learn and reveal more about how to prevent the spread of COVID-19, German government officials are beginning to re-open states and loosen social contact rules. However, the quick shift to virtual contact combined with the networks ability to cope has many people wondering if they want to return to their pre-COVID19 ways. With that being said, we can most likely expect that the network utilization we saw during the crisis to remain an ongoing trend rather a one-hit wonder.

To stay ahead of the trends, it is important for ISPs and network operators to have a visibility into their network traffic behavior. With BENOCS Analytics, you too can ensure your network is ready for the increasing traffic volumes as well as any other long-term spikes in utilization.

As the COVID-19 continues to spread globally at alarming rates, governments and large companies alike are taking great preventative measures to slow the spread of the disease, such as by cancelling large events, limiting travel, and forcing employees to work from home. These initiatives are moving a large influx of people into the digital realm at a rapid rate, which is stressing out networks and causing the quality of service to reduce. With so many people now relying on the internet for their livelihood during this pandemic, it is important for service providers to have control over traffic volumes in order to maintain their quality of service. For that, they need excellent network visibility and analytics.

In just a few days’ time, countries such as France, Spain and Italy are already starting to see the effects that the new social restrictions are having on the network. Telecoms in Spain, for example, asked customers today to “adhere to some best practice in an attempt to maintain some sort of tolerable experience”. French telecoms, on the other hand, are starting to practice bandwidth discipline by limiting videos streaming sites such as Netflix and YouTube, in order to prioritize those working in home office.

On top of that, mobile networks are also taking a large hit with an increase in their network traffic as loved ones try to stay connected with one-another and colleagues try to collaborate via video calls, messaging apps, and regular telephony.

In order to cope with the sudden increase in traffic, while at the same time maintaining their quality of service for end-users, network operators need to understand their traffic. This includes: where traffic originates, where it terminates, what type of traffic is traveling on their network and how much. With this information, operators can work with OTTs on decreasing traffic volumes such as reducing video quality from HD to 480p or less during hours of high congestion. Therefore, still providing their services without reducing speed or connectivity.

During times of emergency, it is especially important that the network does not fail as more people turn to the digital realm for staying connected to work and loved ones. Therefore, it is necessary that network operators have access to important network insights for target network management. It is important for network operators to have network analytics.

Learn more about BENOCS Analytics here.

It’s that time of year again. Another great year is over, and it is time to start making plans for an even better year to come. As we begin to map out our goals for the next 366 days, we thought it might be fun to look further into the future at the potential solutions and services BENOCS could offer its user… when the time is right.

Today, network analytic tools are typically used for four main purposes: DDoS protection, peering & transit optimization, network planning and network debugging. However, as the network continues to grow and change, it is important that you not only choose analytics tools that can support these tasks now, but to also invest in those that are adaptable for whatever new challenges emerge on the network in the future. Here are a few areas of data-driven network management that we believe will one day be relevant that BENOCS could provide.

In order to guarantee a great quality of service for end-users, network service assurance departments on both the network side and the content-producer side use network probes to determine user experience in real time and on granular level. This solution is providing great insight, however debugging still is a manual process, which will eventually become insufficient as the network expands and traffic volumes grow. What service assurance departments will need in addition to knowing when the service performance has decreased is the ability to see where the problem lies for accurate troubleshooting. BENOCS works on solving that issue by creating a probe integration tool that will operate using the relevant data on network topology already collected by our Core Engine.* Not only could it show when the quality of service has decreased, but also the exact path that traffic traveled on, allowing you to see where the quality problems occurred and immediately take action against it.

*The BENOCS Core Engine collects, processes and cross-correlates protocol data from network routers including: BGP, IS-IS, OSPF, Netflow, Netconf, SNMP and DNS.

As a Transit Provider, one of your goals is to decide on how to send traffic at the lowest cost without sacrificing quality of experience for end-users. Typically, traffic can be sent via very different alternative paths: the cheapest route that often fails during peak hours, the mediocre route that is slightly more expensive, or the highest quality and most expensive route, just to name a few. As technology for changing the traffic patterns is limited, Transit Providers are often faced with the decision to either provide great service all of the time OR pay the lowest price. What if there was a way to know exactly when to switch between the routes in order to provide the targeted service levels at the lowest cost? Using the network data already integrated in BENOCS, there is a potential to create a cost and revenue integration solution allows you to automatically change the route of traffic during network failures and peak hours, depending on commercial- and quality-parameters. This means sending your traffic on the low-priced route until it no longer satisfies your quality standards. On top of that, you would obtain more differentiated billing capabilities, charging your customers more accurately by having visibility into the revenue and applicable cost of each customer network.

The role of CDNs on the network has changed significantly over the last decade. As the demand for internet content continues to increase, so does the demand for getting that content from the content provider to the end-user. For this reason, CDNs have grown in size and market share, and now carry diverse content types from multiple content providers. At the same time, public CDNs are also increasingly used to offload traffic during peaks hours and in hard-to-reach networks. Given the diversity and volatility of traffic carried by a single CDN, it is becoming increasingly important for networks to understand the structure and profile of a CDN’s traffic stream to avoid overload and abuse. Since DPI is not viable anymore, integrating DNS information with traffic data from the BENOCS Core Engine could provide necessary visibility into CDN traffic flows in order to full understand the traffic in your network.

In some cases, the future of the network is already taking place as new technology is developed and tested every day. We see SDN technology being deployed not only at the customer edge, but also in core-backbone segments. As the network backbone’s hardware becomes softwarized and thus configuration- and automation- capabilities enhance, you will need to have deep and automated network visibility in order to take full advantage of the new kit. Bringing network-external parameters (like QoE, price) into routing decision algorithms greatly enhances the cost-efficiency and quality of your network, at lower capex. And how could one achieve this visibility and automation? You guessed it! With BENOCS. Such external parameters, combined with the data already collected and processed in BENOCS Core Engine, become important SDN-Controller-Input, which would trigger network automation in SDN-empowered networks.

The future of the Internet is exciting, however, knowing how it will develop and what is necessary for its maintenance is important for its overall sustainability. That is why it is important to invest in products and tools that are already backed by powerful data architectures and have the potential to evolve into the products you need to bolster your future network’s performance.

Please visit our Analytics and Director pages to learn more about what BENOCS provides today, or contact us anytime.

Back in 2010, before BENOCS, our founder along with a few other researchers presented the new challenges facing ISPs: CDNs/hyper-giants and their poorly mapped traffic. In that proposal[1], they opened the research community to a new idea: the prospect of creating a system that would be implemented in the ISP network, which would use the network’s data to facilitate better mapping from the CDN/hypergiants’ side. Now, nine years later and six years of development, the system called BENOCS Flow Director is not only running, but has also proven its viability and is showing positive results.

This year, BENOCS, along with researchers from Max Planck Institute for Infomatics, TU Berlin and TU Munich, is proud to report on its progress since its system, the BENOCS Director, enabled the first ISP/CDN cooperation in 2017, which will be presented at both ACM CoNEXT 2019 and APNIC 49.

So what are we talking about when we talk about hyper-giants and ISP/CDN cooperation? For us, a hyper-giant is a large network  that sends at least 1% of total traffic delivered to broadband customers in the ISP network and publically identifies as a CDN, cloud, content or enterprise network. Since the introduction of video and social networks, demand for content has risen rapidly, causing CDNs to become more relevant for ISP networks: the top ten – mostly hyper-giants – being responsible for more than 50% of the traffic on the network . With traffic sizes that significant, it is important that CDNs of all kinds deliver their traffic as accurately as possible in order to reduce congestion on ISP networks and provide the best quality of service.

Given the rapid growth, ISPs and CDNs have also been challenged with trying to keep up with one another’s development, causing them to make unavoidable upgrades just to maintain the quality of service. This lack of visibility has resulted in an extraordinary amount of stress on ISP networks as well as higher costs and maintenance for both sides. Before the BENOCS Director, as well as in some cases today, ISPs and CDNs have implemented their own methods when trying to cope with the growth of content demands and traffic on the network, such as performing their own measurements, which can only provide “best guesses” of the current network state. This is becoming more challenging as CDNs and hypergiants expand and connect more ingress points to the ISP network – which create more path options for them to take.

Since both ISPs and CDNs need to co-exist on the network and require visibility of the other in order maintain their performance, why not get them working together? That is how BENOCS Flow Director was born.

BENOCS Flow Director is “an ISP service enabling ISP-CDN collaboration with the goal of improving the latter’s mapping,” according to the research paper, thus reducing costs and improving services for both parties. It does so by collecting and processing the necessary data at scale from the ISP to be able to compute mapping recommendations. It then uses this information to rank every possible ingress point from best to worst and gives this information to the CDN. It is a unique system that was intentionally designed to be vendor diagnostic, deployment agnostic, easy to integrate, fully automated and scalable, so that it could fit into any network and work with any CDN/hypergiant.

According to the research paper, two years after connecting the first hypergiant to a large ISP, it is already working. When the cooperation started, the hypergiant was delivering 70% of its traffic optimally with the trend declining. The combined interest of optimizing network traffic ultimately motivated the CDN to test BENOCS Flow Director. As of today, this metric is in the range of 75-84% and increasing.

So, what would happen if all major hypergiants were to active BENOCS Flow Director? According to the research paper:

1. Theoretically, an ISP could see a 20% long haul decrease is traffic reduction, given the CDNs do not have constraints.
2. Every CDN is different, with some able to reduce their long haul traffic in an ISP network by 40% – this happens because some CDNs interconnect with the ISP at different PoPs, and their traffic matrices differently.
3. If the system were to be used by all CDNs, the traffic on long-haul links would further reduce to less than 80%

All of which would eliminate guesswork to create a better and more stable network ecosystem, leading to higher quality of service along with a reduction of network infrastructure in use.

This post is based on the research paper Steering Hyper-Giants’ traffic at Scale. We are proud to announce that it won “Best Paper Award” at ACM CoNEXT, 2019 in Orlando, FL and the IRTF’s “Applied Networking Research Prize” for our CTO, Ingmar Poese, in 2020. You can read the full paper here.

[1]     Poese, I., Frank, B., Ager, B., Smaragdakis, G., Uhlig, S., & Feldmann, A. (2011). Improving content delivery with PaDIS. IEEE Internet Computing, 16(3), 46-52.