The World Cup Caused the Busiest Hours the Internet Has Ever Had

The last couple hours were some of the internet's busiest hours of all time. In fact, when final numbers come through, the US-Germany and Portugal-Ghana World Cup games will most likely end up being the most-streamed live events of all time, from a bandwidth perspective.

According to Akamai, an internet content delivery network that's responsible for delivering roughly a quarter of all internet traffic at any given time, roughly 6 tb/s were being streamed through its servers during the US-Germany games. A representative with the company told me that Akamai helped deliver the game to at least 3.5 million people.

Right now, the only competitors for most-streamed event as far as the company is concerned are last year's reveal of the XBox One and the Royal Wedding, according to the company. While Akamai handled all of the XBox One traffic, dozens of streams worldwide showed today's games.

ESPN also told me it had a record for streaming, saying that it handled about 1.7 million concurrent viewers during the games. So far, neither company has sorted out individual games, but ESPN says that the vast majority of its viewers were watching the US-Germany game.

"It's a new sports record for us. It's the largest event we've ever done and it's the largest world event, in total, ever," Bill Wheaton, senior vice president of Akamai's media division, told me. The numbers beat out March Madness, as well as the US hockey games and opening ceremonies in Sochi. It was both a North American and a global record, Wheaton said.

The fact that it was the last game of the group stage of the World Cup makes it hard to suss out the exact numbers for each game, because the two games start simultaneously. Previously, however, Akamai hit a peak of 4.59 tb/s during the June 17 Brazil-Mexico game. As you can see from Akamai's live traffic graph, today's games put that number, and all the previous days of the World Cup, to shame.

Here's what the graph looks like in North America:

Wheaton said that, on his company's end, there were no streaming slowdowns, and everything has been running smoothly so far this World Cup. There have been some reports floating around that WatchESPN crashed for some users during the first half. (I watched it on a TV, old school style.) A quick Twitter scan suggests that some Comcast users had trouble streaming the game—the company hasn't gotten back to me on whether they had any trouble getting the game to its users.

FINAL WatchESPN record 1.7 mil peak concurrent viewers. Minor issues at start of match. Internet rarely tested like this for sporting event.

— Kristie Chong Adler (@KristieESPNPR) June 26, 2014

The game's work-unfriendly kickoff time certainly contributes to these insane numbers, with many people stuck at a desk and forced to stream it on their computers.

In any case, this record is probably going to be broken sometime in the next couple weeks, as the World Cup games continue getting more important. With the United States and Mexico on to the next round, either one of those teams could break North American records.

So, why bother with these stats? Because this could be the last World Cup with any sort of net neutrality rules. When we talk about "internet fast lanes," this is exactly the kind of content that ISPs want to charge more for you to "prioritize." Live sports are best watched in high definition, and public demand for high quality streams isn't going anywhere. These games are also back-breaking for servers.

"The quality of the streams keeps getting bigger and better," Wheaton said. "Compared to the streams we were delivering last World Cup, we're looking at them being between two-and-a-half and three times larger from a bandwidth perspective."

That growing bandwidth demand is reflected in a report the company put out this morning, called "State of the Internet." In that report, the company judges the readiness of countries to stream 4K, ultra high definition video. By the time the next World Cup rolls around, that's going to be the quality consumers are going to want.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the US isn't ready, not by a long shot. Akamai estimates that, in order to stream 4K video seamlessly, you need at least a 15 mb/s connection. So far, just 17 percent of the country is hooked up with that capability. Notice how we're not on this list:

Come next World Cup, let's hope that percentage has risen. And let's hope we're not all stuck paying extra if we want to stream the game.