Didn't the Pokemon Bank manage to crash the network?

They're doing voice chat in this game?  I have been living under a rock for awhile now, and haven't heard... If so, cool! I need to get a headset.

It wouldn't be the first time, but they're shutting down Wii and DS servers to help with the new NN servers. They're taking action to avoid what happened with  Pokemon Bank.

Funny how the internet is twisting things again.
Some people say the Wii servers are going off because the company hosting them for Nintendo is gone. Others say it's all Nintendo and instead of buying new hardware for Wii U they just put their Wii U stuff on the old servers.

I don't say any of these are true, though.
Mario Kart 8 will definitely be not playable online for at least some people when it releases. Some territories are always suffering during the first days of a game. Even if the game and servers are perfectly tested, it's all just simulations of thousands of connections.

Back then they used akamai, for sure. Don't know what they use currently.

This is Nintendo we are talking about, so you never know!

No.

But I do think too many people will try playing at too low of a connection speed though.

After Nintendos' predictions for the next year they must have no idea how many people are going to play Mario Kart 8 online. So yes, it will be awful.