Apple, Akamai speed past Internet records

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- The webcast of the MacWorld Expo keynote delivered by Steve Jobs last week set new Internet records for the delivery of content at broadband rates.

More than 6 Terabytes of content were served during the one-and-a-half-hour webcast, which attracted more than 95,000 Web visitors. During the peak of the webcast, more than 4.3 Gbps of video were streamed at broadband rates to more than 21,000 simultaneous viewers, including 5,000 visitors, who watched 1 Mbps streams.

"The results of last Wednesday's MacWorld Expo keynote address are significant because of the sheer amount of broadband content delivered and the number of reported simultaneous streams," said Alex Benik, carrier convergence analyst at the Yankee Group. "These results are indicators that when you have compelling content, broadband streaming media can be a powerful communications tool."

During the keynote, Jobs unveiled Apple's new line of desktops including the Power Mac G4 Cube. The webcast at www.apple.com attracted more than 400,000 hits in all and delivered the equivalent of 67,000 hours of content.

The keynote was streamed over Apple's QuickTime TV (QTV) network, which includes Apple's QuickTime 4 player, and was delivered by Akamai's FreeFlowSM Streaming service and global network.

Akamai's scalable network architecture enabled streams ranging from 28 K- to 1 Mbps. Akamai's Web traffic Reporter tool calculated the record-breaking data in real-time, monitoring all activity during the event.