In parallel to the quarter final of the second leg of the UEFA Champions League on April 16 at 9:21pm (CEST), more than 17 terabits per second (Tbps) of data flowed over the IX for the first time.
“Shortly before the start of the European Championships, Germany, the home of this year’s tournament, seems to be slowly catching soccer fever,” says Dr. Thomas King, CTO at DE-CIX.
“We already saw last year that the UEFA Champions League matches are a real streaming magnet. This trend is continuing unbroken in 2024.”
“After all, watching live sport over the Internet has several advantages over linear television. Fans can watch the highlights of the game again at any time, and they can view games flexibly via the device of their choice. Whether on the couch or on the go with a smartphone – online streaming has a great future.”
17 terabits per second corresponds to 5.7 million videos in HD quality being streamed simultaneously. In an analog world, 17 terabits per second is equivalent to around 3.9 billion A4 pages of text – i.e. a stack more than 420 kilometers high, almost 50 times higher than Mount Everest.
This means that data traffic at one of the world's largest Internet Exchanges has increased by 20% since the beginning of 2023 and by almost 60% since the beginning of 2022. Looking at the past five years, data throughput at DE-CIX Frankfurt has almost tripled, the company said.
