World Cup Fever: Internet Has Busiest News Day as Tabulated by Akamai

Akamai, the world's largest operator of a network of computers, today is showing on its Web site that it is the busiest day for bandwidth demand for news sites.  There are some 11 million visitor requests per minute to its network, up 233 percent from the normal demand at this time.

The previous record for bandwidth requests for news sites was the Election Day victory (11/5/08) inauguration of President Barack Obama where demand peaked at 8 million visitors requests per minute.

While Akamai does not report on the world's total Internet demand, it carries many of the world's biggest news organizations including the BBC, CNN, and NBC.

The Akamai News Index, which is reported here, tracks over 100 news video sites.  This does not represent the overall demand to the Akamai network.

We expect that much of this traffic is coming from demand along with consumption of HD video.  Beet.TV spoke with Akamai's Suzanne Johnson at the NAB conference in April.  We have republished the video today.

Below is a graphic from live counter on the Akamai site, taken at noon EDT today.