These stats offer fascinating insights into Internet music, retail use

Internet infrastructure services provider Akamai says it delivers betwen 15 to 20 percent of the world's Web traffic on any given day.

Now, Akamai has launched a fleet of free Web-based services that show real-time, last-24-hours and historical traffic pattern data on activity and demand for general Internet connections, retail transactions, music download facilitation, and other features they provide.

I went online just before 3 a.m. Pacific. I looked at three of Akamai's patterns, and found some fascinating stuff.

I will show you three screencaps now.

At 3 a.m. PDT, we might have expected North American Internet use to be light. It is, but notice where most of the North American Internet activity is taking place? Not on the East Coast where some folks are waking up, but on the West Coast, where folks (such as yours truly) are up late. These stats may also be reflective of the high bandwidth websites that are hosted out of Silicon Valley.

Now, let us look at retail traffic patterns for ecommerce and similar apps:

4 p.m. and 10 p.m. local times look like the busiest. IMHO: 4 p.m. is before the breadwinner gets home, and 10 p.m. is when the evening's chores are done and it is time to buy.

But what about online music listening and downloads? I am glad you asked.

North Americans seem to listen to and download the most music, and around 3:45 p.m. local time seems to be the optimal moments. Could it be that's the time just after most kids get home from school?

Of course, that's before they break open the books for homework (yea, right).

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