---Millions of cubicle dwellers across the country helped set records for Internet traffic on Tuesday as they watched online video of the inauguration ceremonies or at least tried to. The overwhelming demand meant that some Web sites and data networks had trouble keeping up, forcing many people to turn to less cutting-edge forms of media...
Data from CNN.com captured the uniqueness of the online surge. CNN said it provided more than 21.3 million video streams over a nine-hour span up to midafternoon. That blew past the 5.3 million streams provided during all of Election Day. At its peak, CNN.com fed 1.3 million live streams simultaneously, according to Jennifer Martin, a spokeswoman for the site. Akamai, which helps companies meet demand for their online offerings, worked with media companies like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Viacom to stream live video. It reported a record-breaking day, feeding up seven million video streams at one time... "We built capacity for CNN.com Live to handle well above and beyond what was, to our knowledge, the most-viewed live video event in Internet history," Ms. Martin said. ~Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/us/politics/21video.html [NOTE: I was able to watch the whole thing here in Brazil either online or on CNN International on TV. I stuck with online because there was a choice between four different screened events.]
