The US has spoken and the world has been watching. After a campaign lasting nearly 2 years Barack Obama will be the 44th President of America next January. This has been a historical election for a number of reasons. We won't go into the details, we'll leave that to the various news media, instead we'll focus on an aspect that we as a UK ISP can see. This has been the first major election of the iPlayer era; where streaming video is becoming king of the Internet. The Internet has played a big part in this election and it's only natural that people have turned to the Internet for coverage. Overnight we normally see only a tiny amount of streaming traffic, most people have gone to bed so interactive traffic like that is expected to be low. Last night and early this morning we saw quite a bit more than normal. At 2am normally iPlayer is around 50Mbps but this morning it was nearer 250Mbps. Even at 5am it was still doing 150Mbps when normally it would be nearer 25Mbps. (Note: streaming content from the BBC news website will be picked up as iPlayer as well.) 
These volumes of traffic don't reflect a massive number of people, probably around 500 customers at 2am and 300 at 5am but it certainly shows that even in the early hours of the morning when there’s an news story that’s interesting, important or captures the imagination people will use the internet more and more as their primary source for information. Dave Tomlinson Plusnet Product Team
US Presidential election coverage keeps the UK awake