Apple's iTunes and Mac App Store Traffic Increases Ninefold for iOS 6 Launch Day

Networking company Sandvine today took a look (via The Loop) at Apple's iTunes Store and Mac App Store traffic yesterday as compared to the previous two Wednesdays, noting that traffic spiked to nine times it usual levels with the release of iOS 6, OS X 10.8.2, and a host of other updates from Apple.

See that huge spike at 1:00PM EDT yesterday? That is when iOS 6 was officially released to the public. This massive increase in traffic was then sustained throughout most of the day, and actually escalated as people got home from work in the evening. This resulted in traffic from Apple’s servers yesterday being over 9 times their average traffic levels.

Sandvine's measurements capture data from fixed access cable and DSL networks, thus including direct downloads through iTunes and the Mac App Store as well as users who updated their iOS devices using the over-the-air update functionality on their Wi-Fi networks. iOS 6 is the first major iOS upgrade to be supported by the over-the-air update feature that debuted with iOS 5.