Elephant in the room - Akamai

Fri Dec 6 16:13:20 UTC 2019

> On Dec 6, 2019, at 9:59 AM, Chris Adams <cma at cmadams.net> wrote:
> 
> Once upon a time, Fawcett, Nick <nfawcett at corp.mtco.com> said:
>> We had three onsite Akamai caches a few months ago.  They called us up and said they are removing that service and sent us boxes to pack up the hardware and ship back.  We’ve had quite the increase in DIA traffic as a result of it.
> 
> Same here.  We'd had Akamai servers for many years, replaced as needed
> (including one failed servre replaced right before they turned them
> off).  Now about 50% of our Akamai traffic comes across transit links,
> not peering.  This seems like it would be rather inefficient for them
> too…

There’s an element of scale when it comes to certain content that makes it not viable if the majority of traffic is VOD with variable bitrates it requires a lot more capital.  

Things like downloads of software updates (eg: patch Tuesday) lend themselves to different optimizations.  The hardware has a cost as well as the bandwidth as well.

I’ll say that most places that have a few servers may only see a minor improvement in their in:out.  If you’re not peering with us or are and see significant traffic via transit, please do reach out.

I’m happy to discuss in private or at any NANOG/IETF meeting people are at.  We generally have someone at most of the other NOG meetings as well, including RIPE, APRICOT and even GPF etc.

I am personally always looking for better ways to serve the medium (or small) size providers better.

- Jared