Pinging Yahoo! (WAS: Getting hacked by Digital Isle?)

Fri Oct 26 21:09:37 UTC 2001

At 01:50 PM 10/26/2001 -0700, R.P. Aditya wrote:

 >Is there an Akamai hostname we can ping which would get a response from the
 >closest cache? Or do we have to let you know in advance that we'll be doing
 >this?

Hrmmm....  Now that is a loaded question.

Allow me to ignore the question and mention one of the kewl ways Akamai 
optimizes traffic.

When you resolve an Akamaized hostname, the magical Akamai domain name 
system will magically respond with the IP addresses of at least two 
"optimal" Akamai servers.  (They might not be "closest" because Akamai also 
takes into account things like server load, but they usually will be close 
- network wise.)  This is frequently a server in the same ISP as the end 
user, especially in the US.

So, while you can do a dig on an Akamai hostname to get the IP address, 
also doing things like ping, or HTTP GETs, require you to resolve the 
hostname and go through the same resolution process.  (Akamai cannot tell 
if you are doing an HTTP get, or a ping, or an FTP, or what when you do the 
resolution.)

In almost all cases, to use Akamai's service (i.e. be a customer), you need 
to have one or more Akamai hostnames associated with your web page, 
streaming server, etc. in some way.

Back to your question, as for permission, I am not the correct person to 
answer that question.  However, they are public web servers, and they are 
designed to let anyone do HTTP downloads of the web content on them, so I 
know that is allowed.

Thank you for your interest in Akamai. :)

 >Adi

--
TTFN,
patrick

P.S.  What's wrong with pinging MS? :p

P.P.S.  Akamai uses its own products (hint-hint-dig-www-akamai-com-hint).