When we think about the upstream traffic that dominates the internet in most regions, we see a lot of video traffic consisting of packet acknowledgements and bookmarking of progress in watching videos, as well as messaging traffic. In APAC, cloud traffic consumes more than 50% of all upstream traffic volume, and shows no sign of slowing down.
Cloud means a lot of things to a lot of people these days. The cloud is not only cloud application, it is also cloud storage, and even application updates from a vendor cloud. For this specific statistic of >50%, the context that we are defining as cloud is three types of traffic, as shown in the graphic and explanation below:
Cloud Storage: Services that are used to automatically or manually store files for a consumer or business to enable access from multiple systems as well as to have backup in case of local system failures. This includes services like iCloud, Google Cloud, and Samsung Cloud that are commonly offered as part of a mobile device and automatically sync files, videos, and pictures as an integral part of the OS.
Cloud Sharing: This can be thought of in this context as file sharing. Technically, peer-to-peer file sharing is a “cloud” application — just the cloud is literally anyone’s computer that is connected to the P2P mesh rather than specific servers in a data center somewhere.
Cloud Updates: We included this category as cloud, because essentially the upstream traffic for this type of traffic is the result of either a system checking with the software update server to see if there is a newer version of an application available, or the acknowledgement during a download (and since Windows Update was in the Top 10 for download, this is statistically significant!).
Note we are not counting social networking as a cloud service, as I view that more as a content service. I also did not include YouTube or TikTok for the same reason.
We are getting close to the release — only a week away, and I think it is time to start revealing some of the rest of the good stuff this week. Stay tuned!
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Topics: Cloud Services, Global Internet Phenomena
