Five Blind Men and the Internet: Towards an Understanding of Internet Traffic

Abstract

Our current view of traffic on the Internet - the world’s largest and most pervasive network - comes from a variety of perspectives, each with its own blind spots and biases. In this paper, we make the case for using publicly available Internet exchange point (IXP) statistics as a complementary vantage point. While IXP data has its own limitations, it is fine-grained, accessible, and independently verifiable - offering a distinct perspective on Internet usage patterns. We present results from a two-year study (2023-2024) of 472 IXPs worldwide, capturing approximately 300 Tbps of peak daily aggregate traffic by late 2024. Over this period, aggregate IXP traffic increased by 49.2% (24.5% annualized), with regionally distinct diurnal patterns and event-driven anomalies. These results provide an accessible framework for researchers and operators to study the Internet’s evolving ecosystem from an IXP-based perspective, and lay the groundwork for systematic, global-scale detection of network anomalies and outages.

People

Ege Cem Kırcı

PhD student

Dr. Ayush Mishra

Post-doc

Prof. Laurent Vanbever

Group Leader

BibTex

@inproceedings{kirci2026blind,
  author    = {Kirci, Ege Cem and Mishra, Ayush and Vanbever, Laurent},
  title     = {{Five Blind Men and the Internet: Towards an Understanding of Internet Traffic}},
  booktitle = {OpenAccess Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  volume    = 139,
  address   = {Online},
  year      = 2026,
  month     = feb,
  publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl {\textendash{}} Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"{u}}r Informatik},
  doi       = {10.4230/OASICS.NINES.2026.25},
  url       = {https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/handle/20.500.11850/797881/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.25.pdf}
}

Research Collection: 20.500.11850/797881