Olympeaks: the impact of Paris 2024 Olympics on Italy’s Internet traffic

12/09/2024

Olympeaks: the impact of Paris 2024 Olympics on Italy’s Internet traffic
Image assisted/created by AI

By Flavio Luciani

The Paris 2024 Olympics marked a pivotal moment for RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana), with its streaming platform RaiPlay playing a central role in delivering 360 hours of live coverage. This Internet distribution was achieved by cutting-edge Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) that served the long tail (small/medium network operators) through the interconnection infrastructures of national Internet Exchange Points (IXPs)  ensuring smooth access for millions of viewers.

Under the Olympeaks observatory (a Namex monitoring initiative), we’ve been able to track the profound impact of RaiPlay’s coverage on Italy’s Internet traffic. The platform attracted record-breaking engagement, with major events like the women’s volleyball final drawing nearly 7 million viewers and capturing an impressive 50% audience share. Italian victories, in particular, drove social media buzz, with clips and highlights going viral on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. As the games unfolded, RaiNews.it also recorded a spike in traffic, peaking at 6.5 million visits per day and driving 25 million video views.

So what was seen in the IXPs?

NOTE: The Internet traffic graphs and examples below in this article refer to Namex, the IXP in Rome. The traffic aggregate of one of the CDNs(distributing RaiPlay) and one of the access network operators(ISP) in the IXP will be shown. CDN and ISP traffic in the examples is missing from the y-axis for reasons of data confidentiality.

For instance, the Italian women’s volleyball team’s gold medal victory didn’t just triumph on the court; it also generated one of the most visible traffic peaks and interesting profiles.

Although they started on the 26th, on the Internet the Olympics open on Saturday 27th of July with the debut of the Italian men’s volleyball team against Brazil.

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Looking in detail at the CDN and ISP traffic, one can clearly see the sets played. Italy beaten Brazil three sets to one.

The Internet traffic during the Olympics is particularly interesting from a profile point of view, in Namex we did not record any large quantities compared to the peaks seen in the past in relation to Serie A football(DAZN) and the Wednesday Prime Video exclusive Champions League matches. So what is interesting to observe is the shape of the graph rather than its quantity.

It is also interesting to note the duration of the peaks, they are usually short and related only to the event being streamed. As, in the next example, the 100 meters breaststroke on Sunday 28 July.

The views expressed by the authors of this blog are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of LACNIC.

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