Machines are consuming more bandwidth than the people
En 2025, el tráfico global de internet creció un 19%, según el informe anual de Cloudflare, empresa que observa el flujo de datos desde una posición privilegiada en la arquitectura de la red. Más que el número en sí, lo que revela este crecimiento es una transformación profunda: la red ya no es solo un espacio humano, sino una infraestructura que las máquinas consumen para construir otras máquinas. En este umbral, la humanidad enfrenta una pregunta que trasciende la tecnología: ¿para quién —y para qué— estamos construyendo el internet del futuro?
- A partir de agosto, el tráfico comenzó a escalar de forma visible, rompiendo la calma relativa de los primeros siete meses y señalando que algo estructural había cambiado en la red.
- Los bots de inteligencia artificial ya representan el 4,2% de todas las solicitudes HTML, una presencia que no es marginal sino sistémica, impulsada por la carrera de las grandes tecnológicas para alimentar sus modelos.
- Los dispositivos móviles concentran casi la mitad del tráfico mundial, pero las diferencias regionales —Android global versus iOS dominante en EE.UU.— revelan fracturas en cómo distintas poblaciones experimentan la conectividad.
- Starlink creció 2,3 veces durante 2025, una señal de que el internet satelital está dejando de ser una promesa lejana para convertirse en una alternativa real en regiones donde la infraestructura tradicional no llega.
- La infraestructura digital enfrenta ahora la tensión de escalar simultáneamente para las máquinas que entrenan IA y para los millones de personas que aún esperan una conexión confiable.
Cloudflare, la empresa que observa el tráfico de internet desde su posición central en la red global, publicó su informe anual de 2025 con un hallazgo claro: el tráfico creció un 19% durante el año. Pero la cifra importa menos que lo que revela sobre el estado actual —y la dirección futura— de la red.
Durante los primeros siete meses, el crecimiento fue discreto y predecible. Luego, en agosto, algo cambió. El tráfico comenzó a acelerar de forma visible, siguiendo los ritmos estacionales del regreso al trabajo y la escuela, pero también reflejando transformaciones más profundas en cómo se usa la infraestructura digital.
El cambio más significativo no involucra a personas, sino a máquinas. Los bots de inteligencia artificial representan ahora el 4,2% de todas las solicitudes HTML de la red. Las grandes empresas tecnológicas despliegan rastreadores a escala masiva para extraer datos y entrenar sus modelos. El bot de Google lidera en volumen, pero la competencia es intensa. El internet, en cierta medida, está siendo consumido por máquinas que entrenan a otras máquinas.
En paralelo, los dispositivos móviles concentran casi la mitad del tráfico global. Android domina a nivel mundial, pero en mercados desarrollados como Estados Unidos, iOS genera el 56% del tráfico móvil. Estas diferencias regionales determinan qué plataformas prosperan y qué servicios se construyen.
Finalmente, en los márgenes de la red, Starlink creció 2,3 veces durante 2025. Ese crecimiento señala que el internet satelital está convirtiéndose en una alternativa real para comunidades aisladas donde las redes de fibra no son viables. La brecha digital no ha desaparecido, pero las herramientas para cerrarla se multiplican.
Lo que muestra el informe de Cloudflare es un internet en transición: todavía moldeado por el comportamiento humano, pero cada vez más impulsado por la infraestructura que construimos para la inteligencia artificial. La pregunta pendiente es si esa infraestructura podrá escalar lo suficientemente rápido para servir tanto a las máquinas como a las personas que dependen de ella.
Cloudflare, the infrastructure company that sits at the center of how data moves across the internet, released its annual report for 2025 with a straightforward finding: the world's internet traffic grew by 19 percent over the course of the year. The number itself is significant, but what matters more is what it reveals about how we use the internet now—and what we're building it for.
For most of the year, the growth was unremarkable. From January through July, traffic patterns stayed relatively flat, the kind of steady hum you'd expect from billions of people checking email, streaming video, scrolling through feeds. Then something shifted. Starting in August, the acceleration became visible. Traffic began climbing faster, suggesting that seasonal patterns—the return to work and school, the shift in how people spend their time—still shape the internet's rhythm, even as the infrastructure itself becomes more fundamental to daily life.
But the most striking change isn't about people at all. It's about machines. Artificial intelligence bots now account for 4.2 percent of all HTML requests flowing through the internet. That's not a rounding error. Tech companies are deploying crawlers at massive scale, pulling data from across the web to train their AI systems. Google's bot leads the volume, but the competition is fierce—every major technology company is racing to feed their models, and that hunger for data is reshaping traffic patterns in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago. The internet, in other words, is increasingly being consumed by machines training other machines, not just by humans looking for information.
Meanwhile, the devices we hold in our hands have become the primary way we access the internet. Mobile traffic now accounts for nearly half of all global requests. Android remains the dominant operating system worldwide, but the picture is more complicated in wealthy countries. In the United States, iOS devices generate 56 percent of mobile traffic, a striking reversal of the global pattern. These regional variations matter because they shape which platforms thrive, which services get built, and who gets left behind.
There's also a quieter story unfolding at the edges of the internet. Starlink, the satellite internet service launched by SpaceX, grew 2.3 times over the course of 2025. That growth might seem modest compared to the overall 19 percent increase, but it signals something important: satellite internet is becoming a real alternative for people in places where traditional infrastructure doesn't reach. In isolated regions, in countries where building fiber networks isn't economically viable, Starlink is beginning to close the gap. The digital divide isn't disappearing, but the tools for bridging it are multiplying.
Cloudflare's vantage point—sitting at the intersection of thousands of websites and billions of users—gives it a unique view of these trends. The company sees the patterns before they become obvious to everyone else. What the 2025 data shows is an internet in transition: still growing, still being shaped by human behavior, but increasingly driven by the infrastructure we're building to train artificial intelligence. The question now is whether that infrastructure can scale fast enough to serve both the machines and the people who depend on them.
Citações Notáveis
Our continued dependence on the internet is reflected in the global growth of internet traffic, with activity normalizing after the return to work and school following the new year.— Cloudflare
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does it matter that traffic grew 19 percent? Isn't the internet always growing?
The rate matters, but more importantly, what's driving it. This isn't just more people coming online. It's machines—AI bots—consuming data at a scale we haven't seen before. That changes everything about how we need to build and manage the internet.
You mentioned the traffic was flat for seven months, then accelerated. That seems like a seasonal pattern, not a structural change.
True, but the acceleration happened on top of an already-growing baseline. The seasonal rhythm is still there—people do return to work and school—but now it's layered on top of AI crawlers running 24/7, pulling data constantly. The old patterns haven't disappeared; they've just become less dominant.
The fact that 4.2 percent of requests are from AI bots—is that a lot?
It depends on how you measure it. As a percentage of total requests, it sounds small. But consider that these are automated systems doing the work of thousands of human researchers. And that number is growing. In a year or two, it could be 8 or 10 percent. At some point, the machines are consuming more bandwidth than the people.
What surprised you most about the mobile data?
The regional split. Android dominates globally, but in the US, iOS is 56 percent of traffic. That tells you something about wealth and market power. In rich countries, Apple's ecosystem is still winning. Everywhere else, Android is the internet. That shapes which apps get built, which services thrive, which companies get funded.
And Starlink growing 2.3 times—is that actually significant?
It's significant because it's real infrastructure reaching places that were previously unreachable. It's not solving the digital divide overnight, but it's the first time satellite internet has been fast and reliable enough to actually matter. That changes the calculus for how we think about global connectivity.
So what does this all mean for the next year?
Watch whether AI bot traffic keeps accelerating. If it does, we're going to have real conversations about whether the internet was built to serve humans or machines. And watch Starlink. If that growth continues, you're going to see internet access decoupled from geography in ways that weren't possible before.