The scale of streaming video on the Internet.

Leo Bicknell bicknell at ufp.org
Fri Dec 3 16:18:23 UTC 2010


In a message written on Fri, Dec 03, 2010 at 11:08:21AM -0500, Christopher Morrow wrote:
> the above is essentially what Akamai (and likely other CDN products)
> built/build... from what I understand (purely from the threads here)
> Akamai lost out on the traffic-sales for NetFlix to L3's CDN. Comcast
> (for this example) lost the localized in-network caching when that
> happened.

Playing devils advocate here....

I think the issue here is that the Akamai model saves the end user
providers like Comcast a boatload of money.  By putting a cluster
in Fargo to serve those local users Comcast doesn't have to build
a network to say, Chicago Equinix to get the traffic from peers.

However, the convential wisdom is that the Akamai's of the world
pay Comcast for this privledge; Comcast charges them for space,
power, and port fees in Fargo.

The irony here is that Comcast's insistance to charge Akamai customer
rates for these ports in Fargo make Akamai's price to Netflix too
high, and drove them to Level 3 who wants to drop off the traffic
in places like Equinix Chicago.  Now they get to build backbone to
those locations to support it.  In many ways I feel they are reaping
what they sowed.

I think the OP was actually thinking that /Comcast/ should run the
caching boxes in each local market, exporting the 50-100 /32 routes
to "content peers" at Equinix's and the like, but NOT the end user
blocks.  This becomes more symbiotic though as the content providers
then need to know how to direct the end users to the Comcast caching
boxes, so it's not so simple.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 826 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20101203/39d3517b/attachment.sig>


More information about the NANOG mailing list