As the moon blocked the view of the sun across parts of Mexico, the United States and Canada on Monday, the celestial event managed another magnificent feat: It got people offline.
According to Cloudflare, a cloud-computing service used by about 20 percent of websites globally, internet traffic dipped along the path of totality as spellbound viewers took a break from their phones and computers to catch a glimpse of the real-life spectacle.
The places with the most dramatic views saw the biggest dips in traffic compared with the previous week. In Vermont, Arkansas, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire and Ohio — states that were in the path of totality, meaning the moon completely blocked out the sun — internet traffic dropped by 40 percent to 60 percent around the time of the eclipse, Cloudflare said.
States that had partial views also saw drops in internet activity, but to a much lesser extent. At 3:25 p.m. Eastern time, internet traffic in New York dropped by 29 percent compared with the previous week, Cloudflare found.
The path of totality made up a roughly 110-mile-wide belt that stretched from Mazatlán, Mexico, to Montreal. In the Mexican state of Durango, which was in the eclipse zone, internet traffic measured by Cloudflare dipped 57 percent compared with the previous week, while farther south, in Mexico City, traffic was down 22 percent. The duration of the eclipse’s totality varied by location, with some places experiencing it for more than four minutes while for others, it was just one to two minutes.
The total solar eclipse concluded off the eastern coast of Canada. At 4:35 p.m. local time, traffic in the province of Prince Edward Island was down 48 percent.
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