Live video streaming traffic tied to Tuesday’s U.S. Presidential Election set a record for a single news event on Akamai's platform, the content delivery network company said.
Akamai said live video streaming traffic specific to the election peaked at 7.5 Tbps on its platform shortly before midnight ET on Tuesday.
By way of comparison, Akamai noted that Election Day traffic on Akamai in 2004 peaked at just 21 Gbps, and hit 1.1 Tbps during the 2009 Obama inauguration, and 1.3 Tbps for the Royal Wedding in 2011.
Of more recent note, first 2016 Presidential debate peaked at 4.4 Tbps in September, the company said.
Akamai also estimated a streaming audience size during last night’s election of 3.35 million, up from 1.8 million during the first 2016 Presidential debate on Sept. 26.
"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,” Bill Wheaton, EVP and GM of media at Akamai, said in a statement, pointing out that 2016 has already been a record-setter for streaming thanks to the European soccer finals and the Summer Games in Rio.
