

Paper: The Akamai Network - 61,000 Servers, 1,000 Networks, 70 Countries   - yarapavan
http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/8/18/paper-the-akamai-network-61000-servers-1000-networks-70-coun.html

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playhard
The paper was published years ago. currently Akamai has 95,811 servers at end
of 2011 Q2! [http://www.quora.com/How-many-servers-does-Akamai-
have/answe...](http://www.quora.com/How-many-servers-does-Akamai-
have/answer/Ramakanth-Dorai?__snids__=24359589#comment509067)

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noelwelsh
Latency is a big issue for the app we're building [plug at the bottom].
Ideally we'd serve content in under 200ms to users around the world. I really
can't see how to achieve this without either crazy Javascript hacks or Akamai.
Looking up benchmarks suggests Akamai CDN has latency of around 10ms vs
100-200ms for everyone else (!!!) The killer feature, however, is Akamai's
edge computing -- there are only two companies I know of that offer this.
Unfortunately Akamai are stuck in the crappy business model where everything
-- even basic information -- requires you to contact them. So we have to go
through the bullshit salesperson theatre while they work out how much they can
shake us down for. Not really what a small startup wants. So crazy JS hacks it
will be, I expect.

Op plug: App is <http://mynaweb.com/> I just broke the sign up form so email
us if you want in on the beta.

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hristov
I think my startup might have a good solution for you. That is if the content
you are serving is of non-trivial size. We do not have servers around the
world but instead work by improving the TCP protocol itself. Thus you do not
have to worry about your server side software being loaded on different
computers all over the world and how it would perform in various virtual
machine environments, etc. Our software would be loaded on your servers only,
and you can place your servers anywhere that is convenient for you.

We still have not officially launched but this is a barebones website:

extremetcp.com

Let me know what you think. You can reach me at hristo at mainlinenet dot com.

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privacyguru
This paper is old. The media went running with numbers that are way outdated -
The platform now has over 95,000 servers in 1,900 networks across 71
countries.

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mey
Anyone have any idea what their operations staff size looks like?

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trjordan
According to the linked paper, the have 60 people managing the machines around
the world, arranged for 24x7x365 coverage.

I'm not sure what kind of work they do, but they make a point of saying they
don't need much human intervention. So, that might be all.

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SergeyHack
It's strange that www.cloudclimate.com/cdn-speed-test reports Akamai Global
Average as 1301 ms (102250 Tests)

Though it also reports Rackspace Global Average as 695 ms (91990 Tests)

