On top of that, our networking team has welcomed many new colleagues. They’ve not only been busy focusing on Europe, but also our recent expansion into the US. We are building our own network in North America to strengthen our connections between Europe and the US, which will heighten the quality of our global network even further.

Like many companies at this time of year, we do not schedule any big activity or upgrade work during the holidays. Instead, we use this time to be proactive, to check that everything is operating smoothly and to order in new products. For instance, the past week we tested network capacity to guarantee there is enough demand in the future. We also ordered new networking hardware as well as assisted other departments with the renewal of any contracts ending in December. In short, we do all that is needed to be completely prepared for 2012.

It’s also really interesting to monitor the increase and decrease in traffic during the holiday period – which is often dependent on what the weather is like. If it’s sunny or snowing, we see much lower traffic due to people going out for long walks (probably to burn the calories from those tasty Christmas dinners). But if it’s raining and miserable, people don’t want to go outside. Instead they spend time online buying new products, researching information, chatting or even playing games. Ecommerce websites for instance experience a very heavy traffic load during this time, often equaling their yearly traffic in December alone, so these companies need to ensure they have enough capacity.

By testing our own capacity, we are able to prepare LeaseWeb for any traffic growth during high periods of demand, while avoiding any traffic bottlenecks of traffic. For that, we need to make sure that all networking hardware such as routers and blades are bought and implemented by the end of this year and on time for 2012.

So what have we got in store for next year? Well, we are very excited to upgrade our AMS-IX peering capacity to 100 gigabit Ethernet! As 100GE is the latest standard, we are proud to be the first hosting provider in the world to implement this technology. This way, we are able to meet the ever-growing traffic demanded by our customers. We are also continuing our expansion into the US and the integration of our German network.

Make sure you keep checking back here to find out more about what the networking department is up to. In January we will be blogging about traffic usage and data trends in 2011, so watch this space! And as always, don’t forget to let us know your thoughts – leave us a comment below, or tweet us (@LeaseWeb).

                          

Well for LeaseWeb, we see traffic continually increasing throughout the year. There is never a reduction in the flow of traffic, but what is noticeable is that traffic plateaus during the summertime. What we usually see in the second half of June is the traffic increase slowly tailing off, and then there is a noticeable spike again at the beginning of September, when more people are up and back online. The traffic doesn’t reduce because natural, organic growth in web traffic balances out the usual fall in web users to specific sites over the summer, so traffic remains constant.

With popular websites sparking a rapid growth in traffic, especially at peak times of year, you may wonder if this affects your website and the bandwidth available to you. Surprisingly even though traffic is doubled year on year, here at LeaseWeb we are fully capable of managing the ebbs and flows in order to support your business, at any time of year. Last month, we broke through the 1Tbps mark and now traffic currently peaks at 1.1Tbps, a fantastic speed! Our traffic has risen from 80Gbps just three years ago, to an anticipated 1.4Tbps by the end of 2011. You can see a great comparison to last year on our 2010 network blog post. Check out the graph below to see the pattern for yourself…

                          

These 100TB packages have proved to be extremely popular. As a result of customer requests, LeaseWeb is now offering selected 100TB server packages sourced from our data centers in the United States or Germany, as well as the Netherlands. All 100TB packages come provisioned with the same LeaseWeb quality, service, and superior connectivity, through a dedicate 1Gbps ports.

Customers can select the location of the data center: the Netherlands, the United States, or Germany, by checking the data center location box at the time the 100TB order is placed. Clients may order multiple 100TB servers located in any or all of these countries to meet specific customer requirements. Pricing is the same no matter where the server is situated.

With the expansion of 100TB server packages to both North American and Western Europe, LeaseWeb continues to lead the hosting industry with highly competitive hosting packages located in major market to service customer requirements. All available 100TB hosting packages are available to order here for immediate provisioning.

                          

There are different estimations of the whole Internet traffic, but we may generate 0.5 up to 1% of the world Internet. In 2010 we will keep growing!

[2009-12-08 update: correction in percentage traffic]

                          

Last week, we connected another AMS-IX connection, which gives us a total of 120Gbps connection. At the very moment it was connected, we were already doing over 100Gbps at the AMS-IX. This makes us the largest traffic sending/receiving party on the largest internet exchange of the world! According to the AMS-IX there is no other company connected to the AMS-IX transmitting more traffic via the exchange as we do.

AMS-IX traffic @ LeaseWeb

                          

Looking at the traffic history, we have quadrupled the traffic within one year. Early 2007 we did around 70Gbps, now over 300Gbps.

The question pops up: where does it stop? Do we expect another increase this big within one year? Although we see more content getting online (video, file sharing, SaaS, etc.) I don’t think we will quadruple the traffic again within one year, but doubling is something we always did.� So let’s see if we can break through the 600Gbps by the beginning of 2010. Would be nice :)