US presidential election is largest news event delivered by Akamai

• Live streaming of election coverage sets peak online video traffic record for a single event
• Live video streaming traffic specific to the election peaked at 7.5 Tbps

AKAMAI Technologies, Inc, a provider of content delivery network (CDN) services, announced that media coverage of the Nov 8 US presidential election was the largest single news event the company has ever helped its customers deliver.

Live video streaming traffic specific to the election peaked at 7.5 Tbps on the Akamai Platform shortly before midnight Eastern Time on Nov 8, eclipsing previous news events, and placing it among the highest video traffic peaks for any individual event delivered by Akamai.

“In what has already been a record-setting year for live streaming with the European soccer finals, Rio and the recent presidential debates, Akamai has again helped our customers deliver unprecedented levels of online video with last night’s election coverage,” said Akamai executive vice president and general manager of Media Bill Wheaton.

“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.”

Nov 8 also marked the inauguration of Akamai’s Broadcast Operations Control Centre (BOCC) in a presidential election. Numerous customers took advantage of the dedicated facility, technical staff and services for real-time support and deep operational insight that is critical to successfully delivering live events.

The BOCC is staffed 24x7 by a team of specialised broadcast issue resolution experts possessing hybrid skills across media and networking to address the needs of Akamai OTT customers. The team, which typically averages 12 at any given time but can grow to more than 50 during major events, operates in overlapping shifts to ensure seamless transitions while monitoring every aspect of customer media performance.

The BOCC was designed and is managed by Akamai director of Media Operations Matt Azzarto, a broadcast systems engineer tasked with bringing together best practices from online video streaming, network operations and television broadcasting into a central hub to monitor and support business-critical OTT video services.

“With the new BOCC, Akamai is helping to address consumer quality-of-experience expectations for OTT by raising our customer service, support and component-level access into the CDN. We’re replacing help tickets and hold time with real-time communication and deep, proactive monitoring designed to alert customers to potential issues before they actually arise,” explained Azzarto.

The BOCC is complemented by Akamai’s Network Operations Command Centres (NOCC) and Security Operations Centres (SOC), which together provide insight into global network conditions and potentially threatening traffic activity.

The centres help Akamai customers securely and efficiently deliver the highest possible quality content to viewers worldwide.

From an historical perspective, election day traffic on Akamai in 2004 peaked at a relatively modest 21 Gbps. The 2009 Obama inauguration reached 1.1 Tbps and the royal wedding in 2011 hit 1.3 Tbps. More recently, the first 2016 presidential debate peaked at 4.4 Tbps in September.

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