The FIFA World Cup Round of 16 match between Argentina and Egypt pushed traffic at DE-CIX Frankfurt, Europe’s largest internet exchange, to a record 29.5 terabits per second (Tbit/s) on Tuesday night.
DE-CIX said the peak traffic of 29.517 Tbit/s was driven by increased demand for streaming, cloud services, artificial intelligence (AI) applications and other digital services during the match.
The record highlights the growing pressure on digital infrastructure as global data consumption continues to rise, with major live events placing additional demand on networks and interconnection platforms.
Ivo Ivanov, CEO of DE-CIX, said the World Cup highlighted a longer-term trend of continuously increasing global data traffic.
“The World Cup highlights a trend we’ve been observing for years. Global data traffic is growing continuously – not just on match days. Streaming, cloud services and AI applications are driving this trend over the long term and making high-performance interconnection an indispensable foundation of the digital economy.”
DE-CIX said direct data exchange between network operators, cloud providers, content platforms and enterprises helps reduce latency, improve reliability and maintain service availability during periods of high demand.
The company said record traffic levels across its global interconnection ecosystem reflect increasing reliance on digital infrastructure worldwide.
DE-CIX operates more than 60 internet and cloud exchanges across Europe, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, connecting more than 4 600 networks.
The company said its global infrastructure supports connected customer capacity of more than 240 terabits, making it one of the world’s leading operators of digital interconnection services.
Share
