akamai yesterday - what in the world was that

Fri Feb 14 18:24:32 UTC 2020

>>> After all - it's not like *they* are going to feel the pain of a single 106G upload, it's somebody else who feels the pain of 5 million downloads of a 106G image
>>> refresh.
>>> 
>>> Economists call this sort of thing an "externality".
>> 
>> I must admit, I'm blissfully unaware of CDN commercials, but I'd have expected that if I give a CDN my binary 100G binary blob and six people download it, I'd be billed a different amount to if six million people download it - and similarly if that blob is 1G vs 100G.
>> 
>> I guess I'm asking if there's an underlying problem with the model here, or if it's just the details of the numbers that are "wrong" in encouraging / discouraging certain behaviours.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Tim.
> 
> I just wish "they" would remember that their ultimate customers don’t usually have 10G pipes - they have 6M and 10M pipes that may take hours, if not days, to download one of these mega blobs.

Uhhhh, it is 2020, not 2010. 100M, 200M, 400M or 1G is increasingly common for home broadband. I’ve got 400M at home, could get 1G fiber for less than $100 if I wanted it, and I’m in your average, run-of-the-mill Midwest city.

-Andy