Live online video streaming traffic of today’s Inauguration of President Donald Trump has reached 7.9 Tbps, content delivery network giant Akamai announced Friday at about 12:17 p.m. ET.
Update (12:38 p.m. ET): Peak traffic has climbed to 8.7 Tbps, Akamai said.
Update (4:37 p.m. ET):Akamai said it also supported 4.6 million concurrent viewers of the Inauguration during the peak period on behalf of its OTT video customers. Friday’s live traffic tied to the Inauguration also exceeded the political-facing record of 7.5 Tbps set during Election Day coverage the night of Nov. 8, 2016, the company said. That also compares to the 7.3 Tbps peak achieved during the 2016 Euro soccer tournament, and the 4.5 Tbps high-water mark achieved during the women’s team gymnastic finals at the Summer Games in Rio.
Illustrating how far the adoption and reach of OTT has come in eight years, live online video streaming traffic from the 2009 Inauguration of President Barack Obama peaked at 1.1 Tbps, Akamai said.
Update (1:41 p.m. ET): According to Fastly, a self-styled “real time” CDN, domestic media saw an immediate 80% spike at 12:01 p.m. ET, when Trump’s Inauguration speech began. That also marked a 232% surge in domestic media traffic overall versus a week ago. International media also saw a big bump – a 89% rise when Trump was sworn in, and a 217% overall increase compared to a year ago.
