World Cup Fever sends Internet usage to record levels

There's a fever running through the Internet today - World Cup Fever.

Today's Web traffic has been classified as "Heavy" for the better part of the day, according to measurements by Akamai. At its peak, traffic for News sites globally started a steady climb about 6 am ET and peaked six hours later, at Noon ET, reaching nearly 12.1 million visitors per minute.

And even though the traffic dipped going into the afternoon, it stayed well above normal - registering some 6.5 million vpn, or 130 percent of normal - at 5 p.m. ET. The bulk of the demand in the last 24 hours has come from North America and Europe - but all regions are reporting "Heavy" usage.

The traffic suggests that the Internet was most active during the Mexico-South Africa game and stayed heavy through the France-Uruguay game. It's also very likely that today being a workday had more people turning to their office computers to follow the action, instead of their TVs.

The day's traffic far exceeded the previous record of 8.5 million vpm, which was set when Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election.