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When comparing enterprise wide area network (WAN) traffic traveling over the Aryaka network in 2013, one type of traffic clearly dominated, HTTP and HTTPS, indicating that applications are continuing to transition away from monolithic, on-premises applications to Web-based consumption and delivery models, according to a report from the company.
While a broad swath of the company’s enterprise customer base is adopting cloud services, a noticeable segment of those enterprises are interested in accelerated network access to cloud services. More than 11 percent of their customers are now accelerating access to cloud services through Aryaka.
More importantly, of those companies accelerating cloud traffic, nearly 47 percent of all traffic from these companies ends up being accelerated cloud-related traffic, suggesting that their investment in cloud services is serious and permanent.
Overall, 61 percent of sites have last-mile WAN links in the 5-20 Mbps range. North American and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) sites have the highest percentage of high-speed links, while India and China have the highest percentage of sites with links of greater than 5 Mbps.
Globally, high speed plus very high-speed connections account for 41 percent of all access links connecting to the Aryaka network. Sites with 11-40 Mbps are fairly consistent worldwide, accounting for roughly a quarter to a third of all sites, no matter which region is being looked at.
“As the enterprise becomes more globally distributed, however, improving last-mile bandwidth will likely not keep up with end-user demand,” the report noted. “Moreover, enough packet-loss issues plague enough regions that unaided business-class Internet will not be suitable for many mission-critical applications, especially those accessed from a distance.”
Aryaka’s data revealed that worldwide last-mile Internet access isn’t as bad as many believe. The company collected anonymous data from the Aryaka customer base, which spans multiple continents, verticals, and enterprise sizes, which range from $2 million to $95 billion in revenues.
The data show that last-mile bandwidth rates are actually better than the typical 1.5-6 Mbps Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) connection sizes that enterprises have come to expect.
“Part of what this signals, we believe, is the fact that the typical enterprise, even in the mid-market, is continuing to broaden its global footprint,” the report noted. “That may mean they are opening branch, sales, or engineering offices overseas, or it could signal a growing reliance on contractors and other forms of outsourcing.”
For instance, the report found few sites have very high-speed connections in any region but North America, with very high-speed sites there representing nearly a quarter of all sites.