Tuesday Election Coverage Was Akamai's Biggest-Ever Stream

Tuesday night's presidential election coverage was the largest single news event Akamai ever streamed, the company said in a news release Wednesday. “Live video streaming traffic specific to the election peaked at 7.5 Tbps on the Akamai Platform shortly before midnight Eastern Time on Tuesday, November 8th, eclipsing previous news events, and placing it among the highest video traffic peaks for any individual event delivered by Akamai.” Traffic on its network during the 2004 presidential election coverage peaked at 21 Gbps, while the 2009 Obama inauguration reached 1.1 Tbps and the 2011 British royal wedding hit 1.3 Tbps, it said. The first 2016 presidential debate peaked at 4.4 Tbps, Akamai said. “Not only are more people watching online in general, they’re watching at higher quality, which contributes to the increasingly higher peaks in traffic that we’re observing,” said General Manager of Media Bill Wheaton.