Oct 20 2008
Record Traffic For Irish Budget 2009 Announcement
Last Tuesday the Irish Minister for Finance publicly announced the details of the 2009 budget for Ireland. The format of this announcement is that the Minister reads a long speech, containing all of the budget details, in the lower house of the parliament. It was a widly anticipated event this year, due to the current economic downturn.
The speech was broadcast live by the state broadcaster RTE on television, radio, and online. RTE peer at INEX, which is the main Internet Exchange in Ireland. The INEX traffic statistics are available online, and they clearly show a massive peak in traffic corresponding to the speech on Tuesday afternoon, in week 42. The maximum throughput during this time was approximately 5.3Gbits/s. I believe that this is a record for INEX!
It is not a surprise that the speech caused a new throughput record, because a new record was also set during the speech last year. (Last year this occurred in early December).
In general, the throughput appears to be influenced most by RTE broadcasting major sporting events online. For example, the peaks in June 2008 and August 2008 coincide with the European Football Championships and the Olympics respectively. It is also possible to see the distinction between the first and second halves of Champions League football matches on the daily graph.
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