The Challenges of Delivering Content through the Internet Tom Leighton Chief Scientist, Akamai Technologies

Outline How the Internet Works The Akamai Solution Company Origins & Overview Technology Overview Talk about purpose of meeting, benefits to audience of being there, review agenda Technological Challenges

The Internet: Simple on the Outside… Content Providers End Users Internet

…But Problematic on the Inside Content Providers Peering Points Network Providers End Users UUNet NAP Qwest NAP AOL

The Four Bottlenecks The First Mile Peering Points Network Backbones The Last Mile

Bottleneck #1: First Mile Content Provider now has worldwide audience; centralization doesn’t work 400 million potential users = huge infrastructure problem

Bottleneck #2: Peering Points No single network controls a large % of access traffic No economic incentive to peer and difficult to implement 6% Worldcom % of Network Traffic Make axes thicker with arrows on each end Make arrow a thin line(same thickness as axes) that drops all the way to the bottom and then extends to the right, almost like a right angle, but softer. Not this thick arrow. Keep the graph ISPs (7,000)

Bottleneck Implications Slow downloads Content must traverse multiple backbones and long distances Unreliable performance Content may be blocked by congestion or backbone peering problems Not scalable Usage limited by bandwidth available at master site Inferior streaming quality Packet loss, congestion, and narrow pipes degrade stream quality Broadband doesn’t help As broadband becomes ubiquitous, the disaster of centralized solutions becomes more obvious— not better

Outline How the Internet Works The Akamai Solution Company Origins & Overview Technology Overview Talk about purpose of meeting, benefits to audience of being there, review agenda Technological Challenges

The Akamai Solution Content Providers Akamai Servers at Network Edge End Users NAP NAP

Advantages Fast Reliable Scalable Content is served from locations near to end users Reliable No single point of failure Automatic failover SERVERS AND SPIDERS SHOULD COME UP AT ONCE Scalable Master site no longer requires massive available bandwidth

Typical Improvement with Akamai Keynote Results Web Site Performance Typical Improvement with Akamai These results are also validated by third-party performance measurement companies, such as Keynote. Noon May 15 Noon May 16 Noon May 17 Noon May 18 Noon May 19 Noon May 20 Noon May 21 Noon May 22 Noon May 23 Noon May 24 Noon May 25 Noon May 26 Noon May 27 Web object delivered without Akamai Web object delivered by Akamai

Technological Challenges 1) Mapping and Server Assignment Huge scale Hundreds of millions of users Tens of thousands of servers Thousands of locations Thousands of customers Must monitor Internet conditions & instantly respond to changes Internet congestion and failures are widespread and unpredictable Must load balance widely varying kinds of traffic, optimize multiple kinds of resources, and minimize various costs Must tolerate large numbers of component failures without ever disrupting service Control algorithms must be distributed and work with imperfect information DNS responses must be given in milliseconds .Have 1) Mapping, huge scale and the four - underneath come up at once. All else builds up as before also, indent all text more so it is indented under 1)

Technological Challenges 2) Logging, Reporting, and Billing Several billion hits per day and growing rapidly Real-time reporting of data to customers with user profiling and customized data mining Real-time monitoring of system for NOCC with meaningful alerts and performance metrics Support for real-time SQL queries to the system HAVE 2) plus first bullet come up at once, then other clicks build. Indent under 2 and 3 have 3 replace two (replacement build). With 3), have first bullet come up at once. Sending you text within e=mail on 4 and 5 more techncial challenges!

Technological Challenges 3) Operations Huge distributed network that cannot go down, despite frequent software changes and constant growth System needs to be secure against attacks as well as buggy third-party software HAVE 2) plus first bullet come up at once, then other clicks build. Indent under 2 and 3 have 3 replace two (replacement build). With 3), have first bullet come up at once. Sending you text within e=mail on 4 and 5 more techncial challenges!

Technological Challenges 4) Content Freshness and Accuracy Stale content can never be served Fast correction procedures in case of customer errors Allow flexibility and ease of customer control over content HAVE 2) plus first bullet come up at once, then other clicks build. Indent under 2 and 3 have 3 replace two (replacement build). With 3), have first bullet come up at once. Sending you text within e=mail on 4 and 5 more techncial challenges!

Technological Challenges 5) Management of Live Streaming and Webcasting Information dispersal to handle packet loss Automatic swapping on connections to improve performance Support for interactive and personalized messaging; e.g., Q&A Real-time data aggregation for polling, etc. Synchronized delivery of audio, video, and slides HAVE 2) plus first bullet come up at once, then other clicks build. Indent under 2 and 3 have 3 replace two (replacement build). With 3), have first bullet come up at once. Sending you text within e=mail on 4 and 5 more techncial challenges!

BET.com The Premier African-American Portal “On Monday our traffic doubled, so we added two new servers with no effect. Tuesday afternoon we called Akamai. Tuesday night we were Akamaized and instantly 6-10 times faster.” Craig Maccubbin CTO of BET.com BET.com Akamaized 90% of Each Web Page with FreeFlow: Improved site performance (6-10 times) Quadrupled page view capacity Postponed 2nd data center build out Preserved graphic-rich page design Improved user experience Net first year benefits of $1.3 million Key Message: Easy Integration – We Akamaized BET’s content in less than 24 hours Results – We improved the site performance without compromising BET’s content Benefits – BET realized a saving of $1.3 million (Note to sales: the $1.3 million includes additional revenue, savings in customer acquisition costs, savings in infrastructure costs with Akamai costs subtracted out) Other benefits include: Improved Site Performance (6-10) times Quadrupled page view capacity Postponed 2nd data center build out (significant cost savings) Preserved media rich page design (supporting customer retention) Improved user experience Net First year benefits of $1.3 million

Questions?