iOS 7 update traffic

Mon Sep 23 13:50:02 UTC 2013

On 2013-09-23, at 09:10, Simon Leinen <simon.leinen at switch.ch> wrote:

> Glen Kent writes:
>> One of the earlier posts seems to suggest that if iOS updates were
>> cached on the ISPs CDN server then the traffic would have been
>> manageable since everybody would only contact the local sever to get
>> the image. Is this assumption correct?
> 
> Not necessarily.  I think most of the iOS 7 update traffic WAS in fact
> delivered from CDN servers (in particular Akamai).  And many/most large
> service providers already have Akamai servers in their networks.  But
> they may not have enough spare capacity for such a sudden demand -
> either in terms of CDN (Akamai) servers or in terms of capacity between
> their CDN servers and their customers.

I think oversubscription in the access network (between the customer and the ISP network that might contain Akamai nodes) is the general concern, at least from the ISPs I have visibility into. Your access network doesn't have to be a narrowband satellite network for this kind of unexpected demand to hurt, and provisioning extra access bandwidth in anticipation of a one- or two-day possibility of increased demand is not practical.

I don't doubt Apple are aware of the issue and will make changes if they can. The characterisation that Apple doesn't care, or is callously causing pain in other networks ignores the commercial reality that user experience is important to them. The user experience when an anticipated update can't be downloaded easily is not great.

The suggestions on how to make things better next time that have appeared on this list seem helpful. I would imagine that any vendor with a huge and widely-distributed user base would do well to take note.

Joe