Internet traffic is not just the number of bytes that are exchanged between servers. It’s also the number of bytes generated by clients in response to requests received by their servers.
There are two types of traffic generated on an internet network: user-generated and server-generated.
- User-generated traffic is generated by users (browsers, email programs, etc.) when they access information or software over the Internet; this includes text, images, music files, video files, etc., but excludes services like email and instant messaging.
- Server-generated traffic is generated in response to requests made by user applications (browsers). For example, when you request the address of Google’s website, your browser makes a request to one of Google’s servers; Google’s server generates traffic in the form of an IP packet with the response that informs your browser about the domain name (www.google.com) that you’ve requested.
Here is the answer to what does the term, traffic, refer to when used in conjunction with the internet?
A web page is made up of several components, but the two most common are HTML and graphics. HTML is used for text, basic formatting and hyperlinks; graphics include images, photographs and drawings.
Web pages are typically much larger than this example because they include embedded graphics as well as text and hyperlinks.
Statistics about page size can be misleading because they don’t tell you anything about the actual amount of information on a page.
For example, let’s say you have a small web page with just a headline and some text and graphics and another, larger web page with the same number of pages and graphics that you can view without downloading additional components.
The larger website will typically take longer to download than the smaller one.
Here are 7 doubts you should clarify about internet traffic:-
1. What internet traffic actually refers to.
Traffic is a term that is used to describe the flow of information on the Internet. This flow can be broken down into three categories – upstream, downstream, and backbone traffic.
Upstream refers to the information being sent from a user to a website.
Downstream refers to the information being sent from a website or content provider back to a subscriber or user.
Backbone traffic is the term used for data which is routed between networks and across oceans by high-capacity telecommunications cables.
2. The meaning of downstream versus upstream versus backbone internet traffic.
Different networks have different types of traffic going through them. For example, a small internet service provider (ISP) may only have a few subscriber lines and be using a single upstream provider.
However, a large international ISP might have thousands of subscriber lines and two large upstream providers.
3. How an ISP can differentiate its own internet traffic.
An ISP can monitor the amount of information being sent to identify spikes or drops in traffic that could be caused by external attacks or problems on its own network. An internet service provider can also monitor usage patterns to identify peak hours for specific applications such as television streaming or online games.
4. How an ISP can differentiate its own internet traffic.
The connection between the Internet Service Provider and the backbone provider is marked with a different identification code or IP address. This is done to prevent the ISP from accidentally sending information back to its backbone provider and vice versa.
5. The difference between internet traffic and bandwidth.
Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transmitted over a network in a specified period of time, usually one second, while internet traffic is the amount of data that flows on that network at any given time.
6. How an Internet Service Provider can quantify internet traffic.
The Internet Service Provider can monitor its network for several different metrics to determine how much traffic is being carried on its network at any given time. It can look at its jitter latency , the minima and maxima of the variability, to determine how much traffic it is processing during any time period.
It can also measure packet loss, which is the estimated percentage of packets that are lost during transit, or throughput , which refers to the amount of data being transmitted in a given time frame.
7. How an ISP monitors internet traffic on a global basis.
Internet traffic can be monitored and measured on a global scale by high-capacity telecommunications cables.
These cables connect major cities and countries around the world and carry information from users to websites and back, making it possible for an Internet Service Provider to track which sites their subscribers are accessing.
This method of monitoring and measuring internet traffic is not only useful for providing customers with statistics on their own activity, but also for identifying malicious activity that may be affecting customers all over the world.
