Global Internet traffic increased again in 2023, Cloudflare researchers state in their annual 2023 Cloudflare Radar Year in Review. Google was the most visited website or service. Unfortunately, Internet outages and malicious traffic are also on the rise.
Cloudflare’s annual survey found that global Internet traffic increased 25 percent from 2022. In all countries, this growth was stable throughout the year, although small decreases in Internet traffic were observed especially around (local) holidays.
Google appears to be the most visited website or service provider in 2023. Facebook, Apple and TikTok follow next. In the new category of AI services, OpenAI was found to get the most traffic. This can of course be explained by the unprecedented popularity of ChatGPT, which launched late last year. It was also notable that crypto platform Binance received a lot of Internet traffic in 2023.
Connectivity
In terms of connectivity, Iceland was touted as the country with the best Internet connection. This is because it has a very extensive fiber optic network, according to Cloudflare. In addition, the researchers further noted that Starlink is booming as an Internet connection provider. Internet traffic passing through Starlink satellites nearly tripled in the past year.
In addition, mobile Internet use now accounts for 40 percent of total global Internet traffic. Cheap Android devices in particular account for much of this mobile Internet traffic. In more developed countries, such as Denmark or Japan, mobile Internet traffic comes mainly from iOS devices.
Furthermore, IPv4 connections are still more popular than IPv6 connections. However, it is notable that in emerging and developing countries, the latter technology is used more often than IPv4. This is also true, for example, of the adoption of the latest HTTP/3 protocol.
As a possible reason for this, Cloudflare researchers suggest that these countries often were not yet using older Internet technologies and are now stepping in with the latest available technology.
Disruptions and malicious traffic
Although Cloudflare sees the growth in Internet traffic as a positive development, the researchers also note some drawbacks in their annual review. The number of global Internet disruptions totaled 180 this year.
Causes of these disruptions were often interventions by governments that shut down Internet traffic in countries for reasons motivating them. In other countries, major disruptions were often the result of extreme weather conditions.
Within global Internet traffic, Cloudflare researchers also continue to encounter a lot of malicious traffic. Just under 6 percent of traffic, for example, involved DDoS attacks that blocked Cloudflare systems.
The researchers also saw an increase in bot traffic and more e-mail phishing. The financial sector was the most attacked in the past year. Log4j was still a major attack vector, but attacks via the HTTP/2 Rapid Reset vulnerability are also more prevalent.
Also read: Nearly 4,000 organizations still vulnerable to Log4Shell