Akamai Delivers Record Web Content During Week of Unprecedented Demand for Online Video

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Akamai Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM), the leader in powering video, dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, announced today that its global network reached an all-time high for total content served.  Spurred by unprecedented end user demand for premium online coverage of major sporting events as well as customer product announcements and software releases, the Akamai EdgePlatform™ reached a new, single-day peak of 3.45 Terabits per second (Tbps) of content served on Friday, April 9th.  This rate of content served is Akamai's highest in more than ten years in business, and represents total, simultaneous content served in support of over 3,100 customers worldwide.

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The traffic peak of 3.45 Tbps is roughly equivalent to the capacity needed to download the entire printed contents of the U.S. Library of Congress in less than a minute.

"This new peak demand demonstrates the Internet's emergence as a primary channel for communications, entertainment, and commerce," said Paul Sagan, Akamai's President and CEO.  "Interest in online news, entertainment, and sporting events, combined with major enterprise product announcements and software launches from leading companies, drove new levels of demand for Akamai services.  Most notably, in just the six months since announcing the Akamai HD Network, we have seen many of the largest live events move to high definition video delivery.  Consumers now expect access to premium content online, and Akamai is uniquely capable of providing services that are helping to redefine television quality and scale on the Internet."

In addition to reaching a milestone for peak traffic served this past Friday, the Akamai network also hit a new peak during the same day for video streaming, as well as a near high for total requests served.  

With online interest in major sporting events – including professional golf and baseball – helping to drive the surge in demand, Akamai delivered its largest ever traffic for high definition video streaming.

Over the course of the day, Akamai logged over 500 billion requests for content, a sum equal to serving content to every human once every 20 minutes.

At peak, Akamai supported over 12 million requests per second – a rate roughly equivalent to serving content to the entire population of the United States every 30 seconds.

Akamai's EdgePlatform is the world's largest distributed computing platform for accelerating Web content and applications.  It is a network of more than 61,000 secure servers equipped with proprietary software that relies on applied mathematics and algorithms to help solve congestion and vulnerability problems on the Internet.  These servers reside within approximately 1,000 of the world's networks and are monitoring the Internet in real time.  Akamai uses this intelligence to optimize routes and replicate data dynamically to deliver content and applications more quickly, reliably, and securely.

The Akamai Difference

Akamai® provides market-leading managed services for powering video, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications online.  Having pioneered the content delivery market one decade ago, Akamai's services have been adopted by the world's most recognized brands across diverse industries.  The alternative to centralized Web infrastructure, Akamai's global network of tens of thousands of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight and performance for businesses to succeed online.  Akamai has transformed the Internet into a more viable place to inform, entertain, advertise, interact, and collaborate.  To experience The Akamai Difference, visit http://www.akamai.com.  

The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai Technologies, Inc.'s management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, the effects of any attempts to intentionally disrupt our services or network by unauthorized users or others, failure to have available sufficient transmission capacity, a failure of Akamai's network infrastructure and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC. 

SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.