Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth

Last week the Internet Archive upped our bandwidth capacity 30%, based on increased usage and increased financial support.  Thank you.

This is our outbound bandwidth graph that has several stories to tell…

A year ago, usage was 30Gbits/sec. At the beginning of this year, we were at 40Gbits/sec, and we were handling it.  That is 13 Petabytes of downloads per month.  This has served millions of users to materials in the wayback machine, those listening 78 RPMs, those browsing digitized books, streaming from the TV archive, etc.  We were about the 250th most popular website according to Alexa Internet.

Then Covid-19 hit and demand rocketed to 50Gbits/sec and overran our network infrastructure’s ability to handle it.  So much so, our network statistics probes had difficulty collecting data (hence the white spots in the graphs).   

We bought a second router with new line cards, and got it installed and running (and none of this is easy during a pandemic), and increased our capacity from 47Gbits/sec peak to 62Gbits/sec peak.   And we are handling it better, but it is still consumed.

Alexa Internet now says we are about the 160th most popular website.

So now we are looking at the next steps up, which will take more equipment and is more wizardry, but we are working on it.

Thank you again for the support, and if you would like to donate more, please know it is going to build collections to serve millions.  https://archive.org/donate

29 thoughts on “Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth

  1. Pingback: Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth – Hacker News Robot

  2. Pingback: Thanks for helping us amplify our bandwidth - News Himalaya

  3. Pingback: Obrigado por nos ajudar a aumentar nossa largura de banda - Mídia Nossa

  4. Pingback: 新型コロナウイルスの影響で「インターネット・アーカイブ」の通信量が秒間60ギガビットに到達、月間通信量は20ペタバイト以上 – GIGAZINE –

  5. Pingback: Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth - honynews.com

  6. Pingback: Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth Internet Archive Blogs – The Death of the Mind

  7. Pingback: Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth – Demo

  8. Pingback: Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth - ZoStore

  9. Joshua D'Alton

    Crowdsourcing? You should consider it.

    Also, considered wikipedia foundation? I assume they are mostly traffic EGRESS, and you seem to be traffic INGRESS, so many get together and pool resources?

  10. Pingback: UBENCLICK- Internet directory -find anything from here

  11. Pingback: New best story on Hacker News: Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth | 3rabbusiness

  12. Pingback: Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth - anisanews.com

  13. Pingback: Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth – frinkcoin.tech

  14. SANTA BARBARIAN

    THANKS A BILLION BREWSTER!!
    HAVE NOTICED THE INCREASE, GREAT NEWS!
    YOURS TRULY!
    SANTA BARBARIAN

  15. Pingback: Thank you for helping us increase our bandwidth | toppertrick

  16. jojo

    With millions of traffic from all over the world, make archive.org the foundation of world history. We must help to develop, donate to keep this service standing! We thank you for your service and contribution to the world.

  17. Not Quite Zorro


    Then Covid-19 hit and demand rocketed to 50Gbits/sec and overran our network infrastructure’s ability to handle it.

    Am I the only one amazed that the Covid-19 lockdown did not break the entire Internet?


    This has served millions of users to materials in the wayback machine, those listening 78 RPMs, those browsing digitized books, streaming from the TV archive, etc.

    Would IA ever consider a blog post that gave a breakdown of its traffic in terms of the respective shares consumed by:

    Users borrowing/downloading books
    Users streaming/downloading music
    Users straming/dowloading movies

    …and so forth?

    I ask because I am curious as to what percentage of IA traffic is based on text materials.

    (Perhaps I am not the only one?)

    1. Tom Livanos

      @Not Quite Zorro

      No, you are not the only one. I, too, am interested in knowing these percentages. It improves one’s awareness of the world we live in.

      On a different note, why not use your offline name – especially here where everything is geared towards transparency.

  18. Fred

    Why are you not trying to find some other spots on the globe to load-balance this popular website with a CDN? It looks like a more logical and future proof internet solution than keeping it centralized.

  19. Pingback: Internet Archive 的頻寬… – Gea-Suan Lin's BLOG

  20. Adele Pucci

    Wow, as an educator I am glad so many people are using this great online resource. Our family/school in Rwanda really appreciates all that you are doing. We use Internet Archive everyday!

  21. CommDirector

    Incredible difference after no visits since begining of covid. You people do a lot with very little and many who cannot financially support as users such as myself are extremely thankful for all your work and efforts.

Comments are closed.