[HN Gopher] Total eclipse of the Internet: traffic impacts in Me...
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Total eclipse of the Internet: traffic impacts in Mexico, the US,
and Canada
Author : jgrahamc
Score : 99 points
Date : 2024-04-09 11:41 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.cloudflare.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.cloudflare.com)
| buggeryorkshire wrote:
| Reminds me of the first lockdown in the UK - I was on-call for a
| major food delivery service. We all went out at 7pm to clap for
| the NHS (which my NHS working family hated), and PagerDuty went
| off.
|
| Went inside, apparently UK traffic had dropped by 20%. People
| from around the world were trying to work out why.
|
| "Er, it's because we all put our phones down to clap for the
| nurses..."
| jgrahamc wrote:
| Yes, that was super visible to us also:
| https://blog.cloudflare.com/when-people-pause
|
| I always enjoy looking at Ramadan in the charts also:
| https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-ramadan-shows-up-in-internet...
| buggeryorkshire wrote:
| Nice. Ramadan / Eid is difficult as it varies so you can't
| put up an accurate notice earlier for on-call engineers.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| It's based on the Hijri calendar (based on the moon) and
| starts 11 days earlier each year in Gregorian calendar.
| LunaSea wrote:
| But the time changes depending on where you live
| mavili wrote:
| Aerbil, are you from from Erbil by any chance?
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| No. Please use email for personal questions.
| azinman2 wrote:
| > which my NHS working family hated
|
| Why?
| free_bip wrote:
| Probably because it's the very definition of virtue signaling
| instead of actually supporting them in meaningful ways, e.g.
| a pay raise
| kypro wrote:
| I was working for the NHS at the time. Peak lockdown for me
| was doing my weekly shop in Asda during the national weekly
| clap...
|
| I had to queue to get in to the store because at the time
| social distancing rules meant only so many people were
| allowed to shop at any given time. Once the Covid marshal
| granted me entry I washed my hands as required with anti
| bacteria hand wash and put on my disposable gloves. I then
| proceeded to carefully navigate the store ensuring I avoided
| sharing an aisle with any other shoppers to avoid attracting
| the attention of one of the many Covid marshals positioned
| around the store ensuring shoppers were adhering to Covid
| policy. While shopping the tannoy system repeatedly reminded
| me that I must remain masked and to keep social distance from
| other shoppers. I walked over to the Pizza aisle to grab a
| Pizza, but most were sold out. A few remained though, however
| they were all NHS themed pizzas to support "our NHS". Then
| the tannoy system announced to customers that the weekly
| scheduled national NHS clap was about to begin and that
| shoppers were encourage to take part. I completely forgot
| about this... I'm holding a basket in one hand and 2L bottle
| of Pepsi in the other. Do I put down my items and wait for
| the national clap to begin or should I just continue shopping
| as if it's not happening? No, what am I thinking, not
| clapping is not an option. I put down my items and wait for
| the clapping to begin. Then we all clapped before proceeding
| with our shopping.
|
| Good times.
| edwcross wrote:
| This "clapping" thing does sound a bit 1984-like, a ritual
| to remember that others are watching you and so you should
| conform to the social norm.
|
| Did the clapping actually help the NHS in any way?
| pgalvin wrote:
| It was intended to send a message of "we support you".
|
| However, most healthcare workers are paid incredibly
| poorly and the NHS is generally in an extremely poor
| state, in part due to mismanagement and underfunding by
| successive governments. Many healthcare workers feel
| their lives could be made much better at the voting
| booth, rather than by people clapping at their door and
| continuing to vote for a party that has a history of
| (justly or not) battling against even below-inflation
| pay-rises. As ever, other factors are at play and the
| issue is almost certainly not as simple as blaming the
| government. Nonetheless, there is a general feeling that
| the Conservative-led government policies since 2010 have
| reduced the standard of living for many, especially
| healthcare workers.
|
| The UK is poised to have a change in governing party for
| the first time in 14 years, at least, but the clapping
| was seen by many at the time as hypocritical of the
| voting public.
| mavili wrote:
| In Turkish there is the phrase "goz boyama" translating to
| something like "window dressing" or similar. The UK
| government gave contracts worth billions to a scam company
| for pandemic related 'Track & Trace' work, which all proved
| to be shenanigans, but when it came to actually rewarding the
| hard-working NHS heroes they got applauds and painted papers
| on people's windows. They had been asking for a fair pay rise
| even before the pandemic.
|
| The UK government has brought one of the best free national
| health systems in the world to the point of being worse than
| useless in a span of about a decade.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| _which my NHS working family hated_
|
| I am not surprised at all.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Oh, neat! I worked for a Car Load Financing company during the
| pandemic. We had data on how many people were applying for
| loans by geography, and how much it dipped from the "normal"
| load. I didn't realize it at the time, but areas with a "low"
| dip also repealed their stay-at-home orders sooner.
| taco-hands wrote:
| I wonder just how many images of the eclipse were taken and then
| uploaded as a result...
|
| I witnessed one years ago and was completely awe-struck by it -
| or more, how tiny we all are in the grand scheme of things.
|
| And we sit here on our chairs getting excited about data logs!
| oplane wrote:
| How does Cloudflare know what the searches were made over the
| internet ? I am assuming all communication happening over search
| engines is TLS protected.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| There's nothing in this blog about searches. It's just raw
| traffic data across all the sites/services that use us. So this
| is showing overall change in traffic while the eclipse was
| happening and isn't related to what people were actually doing
| on the Internet.
| tomschwiha wrote:
| What do you mean by searches? The article talks about internet
| traffic in general, which they can monitor.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Cloudflare MITM lots of connections plus they run a DNS server
| so they know exactly what you're up to.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Running a DNS server lets them know what site you're going
| to, just like everyone who sees the secured request also
| knows, right? Otherwise there'd be no way for the request to
| end up at the right location. I suppose they might have an
| advantage with an encrypted DNS, but I don't think it's much
| of a MITM if you're sending your request to them to find out
| where to go.
| quesera wrote:
| Cloudflare terminates SSL for all customers behind their
| DDOS protection, by necessity.
|
| GP is technically correct, but is tilting at windmills at
| best, making veiled accusations at worst.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Oh, interesting. I didn't realize that.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| Was it veiled? Sorry. Cloudflare is an arm of the US
| government helping to eavesdrop on all internet traffic.
| quesera wrote:
| All US companies follow US law. It sounds goofy, I know,
| but it's a cultural thing.
|
| When you operate at Cloudflare's scale, you receive a lot
| of inquiries from law enforcement in all countries. See
| also Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Verizon,
| Linode, Hurricane Electric, et cetera ad inifinitum.
|
| If your accusation is more specific than that, you'll
| want to rethink the word "arm" which is clearly incorrect
| and makes you sound like a loon.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| New account "just asking questions".
| oplane wrote:
| Thanks Boss, totally wasn't the intention. But I mistakenly
| assumed traffic was all related to "search".
|
| Now I am not a fool anymore by "just asking question".
| dhosek wrote:
| Anecdotally, T-Mobile cellular internet slowed to a crawl in
| southern Illinois when the eclipse entered the partial stage and
| was flakey for about an hour afterwards.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| AT&T in SE Oklahoma was practically unusable as well. Ping
| times were 300-1000ms and packet loss was (didn't run ping for
| very long) probably 90+%. Loading a webpage just didn't work.
| Sending a WhatsApp text message worked if you were patient.
| tzs wrote:
| It's interesting that it was so closely tied to the actual
| eclipse. I'd have not expected that. I'd have expected people
| to be trying to make the most use of cellular while waiting for
| the eclipse. You've got all those people who travelled to it
| trying to keep themselves occupied while waiting.
|
| I saw the 2017 eclipse near Madras, OR. That part of Oregon is
| mostly agricultural with scattered small towns every few miles.
| T-Mobile was close to useless from when I got there around noon
| the day before the eclipse to at least an hour after the
| eclipse.
|
| An old friend that I hadn't seen in decades was in the same
| general area and we both had T-Mobile. We were trying to figure
| out if we could meet up, and I don't think we managed to get a
| single voice call to go through. SMS would occasionally go
| through albeit with an hour or more of lag.
| CommitSyn wrote:
| Many more people taking photos and videos than usual, and
| sharing those photos and videos, as well as iCloud automated
| backup?
|
| I assume friends/family calling/Facetiming to see or share
| the experience as well. Many traveled there and didn't have
| WiFi.
| sneak wrote:
| iCloud Backup generally happens at night when on Wi-Fi.
| quesera wrote:
| Fascinating info, and great visualization!
|
| An interesting discontinuity that jumps out to me is that AR
| dropped 54%, but neighboring LA and MS dropped 0%. AR was in
| totality, but LA and MS were close.
|
| Part of it is probably related to the distribution of population
| vs the path of totality. Similarly, VT dropped more than double
| what neighbor NY did, but VT's population is mostly in Burlington
| (totality) whereas NY's is in NYC (not totality and not so
| mobile).
|
| But 54% to 0% seems too dramatic a difference for that to be the
| full explanation. Any insights? Maybe just inadequate data to
| calculate?
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Totality is a much bigger deal.
|
| Near totality is cool, but it's not the same couple of minutes
| of magic.
| quesera wrote:
| Agreed, but the other neighboring, non-totality, states, do
| not show the same discontinuity in data.
| emot wrote:
| Hey there. I can provide some more details. Our data doesn't
| show as much of a drop in Mississippi compared to Arkansas.
| However, in cases where traffic is higher than usual during the
| day (as it was in Mississippi and Louisiana), the drop compared
| with the previous week is even less noticeable using this
| method.
| quesera wrote:
| Interesting, I was wondering about that too -- so are the "0%
| drop" states sometimes actually "non-zero % increase" states?
| emot wrote:
| I think there's only one or two states where that happens.
| If you check the table, I use "--" instead of 0%.
| Goonbaggins wrote:
| Louisiana was pretty smothered by clouds during eclipse time
| yesterday which likely had an impact.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| In my country, the largest internet provider had intermitent
| service interruptions for a couple hours ADSL and mobile. They
| were approximately 1 minute every two minutes. Even 3g failed a
| couple times.
|
| Such interruptions happen a couple times a year, only.
| Coincidence % would be 2(100)/(365)
|
| We had a 20% eclipse so, it was a regular working day. I would
| rule out increased usage)
| Solvency wrote:
| Grammatically the title should be "Total eclipse ON the
| Internet:"
| quesera wrote:
| This title is obviously a play on the Bonnie Tyler song "Total
| Eclipse of the Heart".
|
| Because the Internet is Love.
| emot wrote:
| Exactly. That was the inspiration :)
| qweravaset wrote:
| Related: a similar analysis based on the 2017 eclipse. It has a
| map with zip-code level granularity and a comparison of desktop
| vs mobile behavior:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20171003232834/https://www.comsc...
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| Yea that 10 hour drive from upstate NY was brutal! The traffic
| was a nightm.... _opens article_
|
| Oh yea and that.
| devsda wrote:
| Akamai should also have visibility into the global traffic
| patterns. It would be nice to know if their data matches with
| cloudflare.
|
| Not just Akamai, even Netflix and other streaming services might
| have noticed this drop.
| blantonl wrote:
| I'm wondering if this might have been a result of wireless
| internet traffic being overwhelmed with everyone in the areas of
| totality uploading pictures and video... actually using internet
| bandwidth at the exact same moment? The resulting congestion
| reducing overall internet usage because it was focused on
| wireless networks only vs/ broadband home connections (since
| obviously everyone was outside and not inside)
| emot wrote:
| It's possible, but we don't have a state-level perspective on
| mobile devices vs desktop, only at the country level. So, it's
| difficult to confirm.
| 20after4 wrote:
| doubtful. people were busy watching it, not live streaming it.
| tzs wrote:
| It would be interesting to see a map of traffic by state, or even
| better by county, compared to normal traffic the morning of the
| eclipse and the evening before the eclipse.
|
| A heck of a lot of people travelled to the eclipse and so their
| normal Sunday evening/Monday morning internet use should be
| missing from where they came from. At their destination they will
| be using internet to find things like food or to pass the time
| waiting for the eclipse so should be adding to the normal Sunday
| evening/Monday morning internet traffic there.
| hiddencost wrote:
| I really want to see an analysis of the impact on the power grid.
| A friend shared their solar panel numbers and it was pretty cool
| ziofill wrote:
| Reminds me of water consumption spiking during the football world
| cup interval (toilet flushes).
| chrisBob wrote:
| Note that this decrease in traffic is after a huge influx of
| visitors. Highways in and out of the area of totality were
| overwhelmed in most areas. I live in Michigan and drove 2 hours
| south to find myself in a small town park in Ohio surrounded by
| other Michigan residents.
| pionar wrote:
| Heh, I could've written this comment. I also found myself 2
| hours south in a small Ohio park.
| fragmede wrote:
| Why can't tech companies seem to keep this stuff to themselves? I
| mean, it's interesting and all, but it's an even bigger reminder
| that Cloudflare is an Mitm attack on the Internet, in order to
| have access to this data. And if they have that data, no one
| could possibly believe they aren't somehow monetizing it.
| Consider if we read the same post from Google or Facebook; it
| would not be as well recieved. When the Internet was still
| little, it was cute to read OkCupid's data blog but those days
| are long past, especially after leaks about Uber's heaven view.
| The post by Sleep8 in the wake of the OpenAI drama was also
| poorly recieved.
| supertrope wrote:
| Corporate blog posts are advertising for their brand and
| service. If they happen to overlap with something interesting
| that's a bonus.
| fmobus wrote:
| In Brazil, during the World Cup, it's very common for employers
| to give the day off when Brazil is playing, or at the very least
| let people take a break to watch the game in the office.
|
| In 2010, I was working for a network management company, and we
| kept one eye on the networks, another on the game. All networks
| graphs saw a very large impact when the game was on, with a quick
| surge during half time. It was fucking unreal. I believe this
| wouldn't happen anymore nowadays, given the pervasiveness of
| streaming services etc.
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(page generated 2024-04-09 23:02 UTC)