Cloudflare has released its fifth edition of the Radar Year in Review, offering an in-depth analysis of global internet traffic trends for 2024. The report details a significant 17.2% increase in internet traffic this year, following patterns noted in previous years, and highlights the rapid growth of mobile and IPv6 requests. David Belson, head of data insight at Cloudflare, elaborated on the company's extensive monitoring capabilities, noting, “Cloudflare’s network currently spans more than 330 cities in over 120 countries/regions, serving an average of over 63 million HTTP(S) requests per second for millions of Internet properties.” He highlighted that the data generated allows Radar to provide insights into security, traffic, performance, and usage globally.
The report, which covers trends from January to November 2024, is divided into five sections: Traffic, Adoption & Usage, Connectivity, Security, and Email Security. Belson observed, “Throughout the first half of 2024, worldwide Internet traffic growth appeared to be fairly limited," but noted that growth accelerated after mid-August, resulting in a year-end figure of 17.2%.
In terms of mobile traffic, although smartphones are used by approximately 70% of the world’s population, mobile devices accounted for 41.3% of global traffic, consistent with previous years. However, in a noteworthy observation, nearly 100 countries generate the majority of their internet traffic from mobile devices, predominantly situated in the Middle East, Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, and South/Central America. Among service providers, Starlink showed remarkable growth, experiencing an increase of 3.3 times.
The report furthermore highlighted the most widely used internet services, with Google, OpenAI, WhatsApp, and Amazon leading in search engines, AI platforms, messaging services, and e-commerce, respectively. Technological advancements were also emphasised in the report; nearly half of all web requests were made using HTTP/2, while 20.5% utilised HTTP/3. Post-quantum encryption has gained traction, with 13.0% of TLS 1.3 traffic now employing it.
Regarding programming languages, Go has surpassed Node.js, becoming the most popular language for automated API requests—a shift noted by Cameron Balahan, Product Lead for Go at Google, who stated, “This is a pretty big deal and corroborates the amazing growth we've seen elsewhere.” The report also highlighted that 20.7% of TCP connections were noted as anomalous, often terminating unexpectedly before data exchange could occur, which could be indicative of potential security threats such as DoS attacks and unusual client behaviour.
Concerning ongoing security vulnerabilities, Belson warned about the persistent threat posed by the Log4j vulnerabilities, stating, “In 2024, three years after the initial Log4j disclosure, we found that Log4j remains an active threat,” with activity levels significantly exceeding those of various other vulnerabilities.
In a related article discussing top internet services across multiple industries, Cloudflare noted the rapid ascent of GitHub Copilot within the generative AI landscape, which entered the Top 10 rankings in September and maintained a position among the top three by November. João Tomé, senior data editor at Cloudflare, remarked, “GitHub Copilot experienced the fastest rise,” while platforms like Google Gemini and Hugging Face saw declines in their standings.
Detailed statistics and trends for specific countries and regions are available on the Cloudflare Radar 2024 Year In Review microsite, offering further insights into the shifting dynamics of global internet usage and technology trends.
Source: Noah Wire Services