Flash traffic from real world events
I was looking at some traffic graphs trying to figure out why they looked so weird for a Sunday. Then I realized that it was from the superbowl! After the game ended, everyone rushed back to their computers to do whatever, and it ended up showing up on a global scale:
This happens for many large scale events, the last World Cup had a huge drop followed by an even bigger spike.
The one I’ll never forget, and really wish I had saved a graph of, was 9/11. I’ve never seen such a sharp drop in traffic, ever. It went from ~2 Gbit (which was a lot in 2001) down to under 1 Gbit in under 15 minutes. Much of this immediacy was due to the actual physical infrastructure that was lost, but then afterwards everyone’s routine was completely changed. The thing that grabbed me more at the time was that after about 3-4 hours, traffic was back up to the levels it would normally be at. Even the most horrible of events won’t stop people’s primal needs (at least for long).
