AKAMAI
Akamai is the leading content distribution network.
Notable content is Apple's free media and Microsoft's software updates.
Content distribution networks move content from a web
server to be closer to web client. Akamai implements this by modifying the DNS
names held in the content's HTML pages.
Content distribution networks are particularly useful in
Australia. Undersea capacity is limited, and downloading content once rather
than many times is helpful. Most client software performs poorly when
downloading distant content, so moving content 14,000Km closer greatly improves
response times. Content distribution networks spread data throughout the
Internet, so they are inherently resilient to network faults and to denial of
service attacks.
AARNet's network contains servers for Akamai's content
distribution network for HTTP, Windows Media and Flash content. We do not have
servers for HTTPS or Quicktime content: this goes to Akamai servers on some
other network.
Current status
This service is in production.
Akamai traffic is charged as off-net traffic.
There is a bug where computers which are taken off the
AARNet network but which use DNS servers located on AARNet pull content from
AARNet's Akamai servers rather than a closer server. This is not a huge
concern: DNS servers which resolve DNS queries for foreign networks are a
security hazard and should be altered to only answer recursive queries for
their site's networks (see AUSCERT AL-1999.004).
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