The Royal Wedding Challenge - Who will be the First to Publish Traffic Statistics?

 

Many of the traffic management and optimization vendors are regularly monitoring internet traffic and publishing reports from which we can learn the recent trends (such as the rise of streaming video). Tomorrow, Friday, is expected to be a special case, as for reasons that are beyond my understanding, billions of people around the world are expected to watch the "Royal Wedding" (a.k.a "William and Kate").

Paul Sonne from the Wall Street Journal provides some technical detials, on the "Internet-friendly event, with a live feed on YouTube and updates via Twitter, Facebook and an official royal-wedding website"

"But Internet services, along with the wedding site and video channel, are sure to be taxed by traffic from as many as 400 million people who could watch the ceremonies online Friday. Roughly two billion people are expected to view them on television .. Google's YouTube is managing the live streaming of the ceremonies on the monarchy's official YouTube channel. Though many online viewers will skirt the YouTube channel and instead visit the websites of broadcasters like the BBC or CNN for a live feed, the wedding could still mark YouTube's biggest live streaming event to date"

"Level 3 a network operator that delivers content across the U.S. and Europe [see "Level 3 vs. Comcast - Charging for Off-Net Internet Video?" - here], is delivering a live feed of the wedding to six major TV broadcasters in the U.S. and Canada, including CNN, and is also serving live Internet feeds of the event across its trans-Atlantic fiber network. Mark Taylor, vice president of content and media, said Level 3 has more than 15,000 servers around the world and delivering the wedding shouldn't be a problem"

See "Internet Providers Ready Receiving Lines for Royal Wedding" - here.

So: Allot (see "Allot: World Cup Generates 26% Increase in Mobile Broadband Usage"- here), Sandvine (see "Sandvine Traffic Report: Mobile Data Patterns Look Similar to Fixed" - here), Bytemobile (see "Bytemobile Forecasts Video to be more than 60% of Total Mobile Traffic in 2011" - here)  -- waiting for your reports!