Here's one measure of how popular live streaming is becoming: according to Akamai, yesterday's concurrent men's quarter-final hockey games from Sochi drove 2.5 terabits per second of peak usage on its network, almost 3 times the peak usage of 873 gigabits per second that Akamai saw during the men's 100 meter final, which Usain Bolt won, during the London 2012 games. It's also 56% higher than the 1.6 Tbps peak Akamai delivered during the USA-Russia hockey game last Saturday (which NBC separately said attracted 600K online viewers via its "Live Extra" app). Update - NBC says yesterday's USA-Czech Republic game alone delivered almost 800K online viewers, a new record for "Live Extra."

Akamai shared the data as a follow-up to a briefing it did for media/analysts around its Olympics involvement. Akamai is supporting 20+ broadcasters around the world, including NBC here in the U.S. I did a short video interview with Dev Gupta, senior director, services, (see below) who explains what's driving the streaming volume, why live events are becoming so popular for content providers, how Akamai combats malicious activity and key trends (we did the interview yesterday before the hockey games, so Dev will reference 1.6 Tbps from last Saturday).

(Note: Akamai is a VideoNuze sponsor)