Akamai’s 3.8M Simultaneous Obama Streams and Inevitable Capping of Customers

Last night I had a long conversation with Akamai (AKAM) about the inauguration webcast and got more details on the actual number of simultaneous streams they served and their methods and reasoning for capping customers on their network.

Many who are writing about inauguration traffic numbers are quoting from the Akamai press release and implying that Akamai delivered, at peak, 7.7 million video streams of the inauguration, which is incorrect. That 7.7 million number is the total number of all audio and video streams for all of Akamai’s 2,800 customers delivered on their network that day.