Network performance update: Birthday Week 2025

Cloudflare’s Network performance update for Birthday Week 2025 reports that the company continues to position itself as the fastest network for the greatest number of last-mile ISPs, based on a trimean of TCP connection times measured from 6 August to 4 September 2025.

The update notes that Cloudflare is the fastest in 40% of the top 1,000 networks, a figure that reflects a decline from 44% in September 2024, and that the 383 networks where Cloudflare tops the list translate to 40% of measured ISPs when excluding non-last-mile networks. Data are gathered using Real User Measurements and a 1,000 largest networks by estimated population, with the trimean calculated from connect times to gauge user-perceived speed.

The article also highlights examples, such as India where Cloudflare sits 2nd with a 5 ms lag behind CloudFront, and Mexico where rankings shifted between August 5 and August 12, 2025, illustrating how margins can be slim.

Additionally, Cloudflare discusses the use of the 95th percentile (P95) to understand worst-case experiences and notes that while it is often fourth in some networks, it remains close to the leader in the 75th and 50th percentiles, emphasising a data-driven approach to prioritisation and ongoing improvement.