Epic Web Traffic for Obama Victory, Akamai Says

electiontraffic

Internet traffic surged to historic highs last night as Sen. Barack Obama clinched victory in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, according to data from Akamai Technologies, which operates the world's largest content delivery network. Traffic to news sites using Akamai's network reached 8.57 million visitors a minute at 11 pm, when Obama was projected as the President-elect after polls closed in California.

That figure easily topped the previous high water mark of 7.28 million visitors per minute for the 2006 World Cup. While Akamai has been publishing its data on its Net Usage Index only since 2005, the growth in Internet usage and traffic over the past three years makes it unlikely that earlier events would reach similar peaks.