Two milestones in one evening
On 17 September, DE-CIX Frankfurt reached exactly 20.02 Tbit/s of traffic, exceeding 20 Tbit/s for the first time. Across DE-CIX’s internet exchanges worldwide, throughput also reached 30 Tbit/s for the first time.
The scale of live streaming
The data recorded in Frankfurt was equivalent to approximately 11 million TikTok videos being streamed simultaneously, according to the published figures. DE-CIX also said that peak traffic at Frankfurt had risen by about 140% since the start of 2020, more than doubling over that period.
Pressure on digital infrastructure
DE-CIX said live sport makes the scale of streaming traffic particularly visible. It linked the continuing growth in global data traffic to streaming, cloud services, gaming and artificial intelligence, while stressing the growing importance of high-performance, resilient digital infrastructure.
DE-CIX runs over 60 Internet and Cloud Exchanges spanning Europe, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Its worldwide interconnection ecosystem links more than 4,600 networks across over 100 countries. At DE-CIX Frankfurt, almost 48 exabytes of data changed hands in 2025, with nearly 1,100 networks connected.