Apple's iOS 7 became available for download last week just a couple of days before the iPhone 5S and 5C hit the streets. As has become the case with major revisions from Apple, the influx of traffic pinging Cupertino's servers led to a lot headaches for those trying to upgrade and according to Web security company Blue Coat, it had a pretty noteworthy impact on the Internet as a whole.
Blue Coat found iOS 7 created a major traffic jam on the web in the days surrounding its release. Based on data from appliances deployed around the world, the company found that customers saw a 256 percent increase in traffic to Apple.com compared to the five days before the launch. In at least one case, Blue Coat found Apple.com traffic skyrocketed to over 32 percent of total web traffic.
iOS 7 varied in size depending on what device it was destined for. Some users found they only needed an update consisting of a few hundred megabytes while others, like iPhone 5 users on Verizon, required an update that was 1.2GB in size. With millions of people pinging Apple servers for updates like these all at once, it's easy to understand the stress that such an event would put on servers and the web in general.
Blue Coat's Jeff Brainard said that unlike regular traffic from streaming companies such as Netflix and YouTube, downloads like this are difficult to plan for although I'm not entirely sure I agree. Apple knew full well that a lot of people were going to be hitting them up for the update at once. It happened last year and the year before and it will happen next year, too. To think that the influx of traffic was a total surprise is a bit naive, but I digress.