As expected, the inauguration and swearing in of the first African-American President of the United States was met by a huge interest and the best way to measure it was the Web traffic.

Millions of Web surfers around the world commented and posted their opinions or watched Barack Obama’s inauguration live on the Internet. However, while numerous Web sites saw their traffic soar, not all of them shared the wealth.

Akamai Technologies Inc. of Cambridge, which delivers Internet content to major sites, said its sites reached record levels of traffic during the presidential inauguration. The peak traffic was of 5.4 million visitors per minute during the historic event in Washington D.C. Akamai, which said it delivered more than 7 million simultaneous video streams during Obama's speech, said the level of traffic was its fifth-heaviest volume ever.

"This is the largest live streaming event we've ever carried on our network," said Jeff Young spokesman for Akamai, which is specialized in assuring that Web sites do not crash under the heavy traffic. 

“It is now clear that this event has driven unprecedented demand from a global online audience," said the company’s marketing vice president Robert Hughes.

CNN.com also recorded a record traffic for delivery of streaming video. The news Web site said it delivered approximately 21.3 million live video streams of Obama's inauguration between 6 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Tuesday. The preceding record had been recorded also by an event featuring Obama – the Election Day when he won the presidency.

As many as 600,000 users posted comments on Facebook during Obama’s inauguration and there were as many as 4,000 comments per minute during the speech, according to a Facebook spokesman.

MSNBC.com said it delivered 14 million video streams and 80 million Web page views during the event. FoxNews.com also had record levels of traffic and said it delivered more than 5 million video streams, which is its highest rate ever.