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

2. 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

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

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

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

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

7. 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)

8. 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

9. 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

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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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)

14. 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!

15. 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!

16. 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!

17. 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!

18. 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

19. Questions?