Goal! With World Cup Soccer action set to kickoff in two days, content delivery networks are expecting increased Internet traffic related to online viewing of the matches, especially since some are scheduled during work hours in the U.K. and throughout Europe. Projections are that tens of millions of fans, including some cubicle dwellers, will be watching the football via their monitors as well as their mobiles, or cell phones.
Like other content delivery networks, Akamai Technologies, Inc., has been building its capability in anticipation of World Cup traffic, the company told the Associated Press. The content distribution network which delivers about 20 percent of the world's Internet traffic said it expects traffic to be "two or three times as heavy" as what was measured during President Barack Obama's inauguration — thus far, the high point for traffic volume at about 1 terabit, or 1 trillion bits of data, per second.
"It could well be another watershed event in terms of people understanding what is now possible to do with video online," Akamai Chief Scientist Tom Leighton told the AP. "This will draw a lot of people at once and that will cause people to be aware en masse that, hey, you can do some very cool things with video online that you can't even do with broadcast right now."
If you'd like to see the traffic visually, check out Akamai's Real Time Web Monitor, which features a tool that monitors real time traffic to the global broadcasters delivering traffic over Akamai's network. If you are interested in sport, here's the World Cup Schedule
