iOS5 release leads to internet traffic surge

The release of the newest operating system for the iPhone and iPad early yesterday evening lead to a surge in European internet traffic.

Following the release of iOS 5 at around 6:00pm last night, UK net usage increased by around 200Gb per second, effectively adding around a fifth to the amount of data that would normally be downloaded at that time.

"This was all Apple traffic – it wasn’t BlackBerry systems coming back online, because those use RIM’s own private network, and so won’t show up on these graphs," head of marketing and business development at LINX Ben Hedges told The Guardian.

There were consequences of this massive demand, however. Apple’s servers struggled to keep up with the traffic, leading to thousands of users unable to complete the upgrade.

Social networks were full of users complaining about the ‘Error 3200′ message that was blighting many installations. At one stage the term was trending on Twitter.

A repeat of the trouble can be expected when the new iPhone 4S hits global retail tomorrow morning.