Europe’s largest Internet Exchange hits 18 Terabits per second data throughput

On the 20th of November, more than 18 Terabits per second of data traffic flowed over Europe’s largest Internet Exchange for the first time (exactly 18.11 Terabits per second). In parallel to the new record, there were several gaming releases and updates from a range of providers. In the last 12 months, the traffic at one of the largest data hubs in the world has grown by almost 10 percent. In the past five years, the data throughput at DE-CIX Frankfurt has more than doubled (+118 Percent). 18 Terabits corresponds to around 10 million TikTok videos streamed simultaneously, or – if one bit were equal to one milliliter of water – the volume of around 90 million bathtubs filled every second.

Utilizing data in low latency on an industry-wide scale

“Digital and high-bandwidth data-based services are driving the growth in traffic at DE-CIX Frankfurt,” says Ivo Ivanov, CEO at DE-CIX. “Internet Exchanges are not only at the heart of all online offers for end-users when it comes to streaming and gaming, but also for industry, which can use them to open up new intelligent, data-driven business models. To interconnect the value chain holistically and capitalize on economic opportunities collaboratively, DE-CIX provides the necessary infrastructure to enable data to be utilized on an industry-wide scale in a controlled, secure, and low-latency manner.”

What is a terabit per second? How much data is a throughput of 18 terabits per second?

• A terabit per second, Tbit/s or Tbps, is a dimension for the transmission speed of data.

• The next lower data rates are specified in gigabits per second (Gbit/s) and megabits per second (Mbit/s).

• 1 terabit per second is 10³ Gbit/s, 106 Mbit/s, 109 kbit/s, or 1012 bit/s, or 1,000,000,000,000 bit/s.

• Data traffic of 18 Tbit/s is created, for example, when around 10 million TikTok videos are streamed simultaneously. The same goes for 720,000 4K video streams transmitted in parallel, each using a stream of approximately 25 megabits per second.

• If one bit equaled one milliliter of water, 18 Terabits would fill around 90,000,000 bathtubs per second.