Industry Forums > Wireless Service Providers > [Bus. Ops] Hosting Akamai

[Bus. Ops] Hosting Akamai

Response removed. I misread your question. Sorry.

reply to TBusiness
I thought that they discontinued this service. Do you have a link to share?

»www.akamai.com/html/partners/net···ner.html

and here is NetFlix's:

»signup.netflix.com/openconnect

I looked at the Akamai a few years ago but I was lead to believe they ended that program. Akamai will send you servers so that you can locally "cache" popular content on your network keeping that traffic on your network and to reduce traffic going across your links to the internet.

The Netflix solution is a peering agreement between the ISP and Netflix. You have to be able to connect to them at one of the IXCs they are in and you have to have 2GB of traffic to or from their network. If you are not located in one of the IXCs then it could be costly but then again if you are pushing 2GB of traffic to Netflix alone why are you not already connected to one of those IXCs to begin with?
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I do not, have not, and will not work for AT&T/Comcast/Verizon/Charter or similar sized company.

According to NF's website you don't have to be peered with them. You can just obtain the server from them, that would be free. They do ask you to be peered and have the server, but not required.

The closest ICX to me is Chicago, but at this point I would just obtain a server from them and connect it to my own networks until being able to peer with them in Chicago. I can obtain bandwidth dirt cheap from L3 and Zayo/Above.net to be able to host the server without a problem.

And currently I have about 4+ gigs running to NF right now in just one area that I service, which is a mid-sized trailer park, which was my first deployment.

My big thing that I need to check with NF on is if my networks/towers have to connected directly to my NOC and to the server or can each one "peer" using their own T1s, etc and go to my NOC. I'm not sure how it really works with them.

You have 4+gigabits per second just in Netflix? I thought you said your network was small.
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OptionsDSL Wireless Internet
»www.optionsdsl.ca

it is small, but i meant 4gigs per week going to NF. Sorry for the confusion.

reply to TBusiness
To really look at netflix or akamai caching, you need to have at least 50 megabit/s+ going to them. They would consider 4 gigabytes a day to be very small.

Otherwise i would look at your own caching system like an appliansys box that can cache some of it like general http, youtube, windows updates, apple, antivirus etc.

reply to TBusiness

The requirement is 8gigs per month according to the email they sent me (NF). The peering is different. And right now I'm not looking to peer with them, just bring content closer via their server appliance.

from NF:

brief summary of the Open Connect Appliance (OCA)

Each OCA is 4RU, and holds about 100TB of content
Each box can serve up to 8.5Gbps of Netflix traffic
Typical deployments are around 5+Gbps (per month)
In terms of steering subscribers to the box- you'll advertise the networks you want the system to serve over BGP (to the OCA). When someone from one of those networks goes to watch Netflix, our Master Control will direct it to the box in your network as the primary streaming server.

reply to TBusiness

reply to jcremin
After checking the few locations that I currently have customers at (4 MDUs) I have between 10-20gigs per month of NF traffic. That's checking everything from the start until this evening at 7pm.

Yes that's a tiny amount of traffic to Netflix. 20 gigs amounts to 5-6 HD movies or 15-20 regular movies or less.

A cache will have zero effect. Netflix will not give you a very expensive box for that unfortunately.
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OptionsDSL Wireless Internet
»www.optionsdsl.ca

reply to TBusiness
Have you heard back from Akamai?
I have been thinking that i want to start a peering exchange in our regional city for 4 isp's that are here with about 5,000 subscribers.
Am thinking if i started a peering exchange, it would encourage our national carriers (who major content providers use) would want to peer as well so we can try and get some free bandwidth.

We have a national fibre carrier that peers at all the internet exchanges around the country because they advertise to content carriers (like our equivalant of hulu/ondemand, news and video websites) that they can deliver their content to users faster. They just need a reason to connect to me and if i happened to be 4 isp's at an internet exchange then they would be keen.

A shared akamai cache at the exchange would be good for us too as it would encourage the 3 other local isp's to connect to the exchange - so i am keen to find out what akamai say their requirements are.

Nothing back from them yet. The only one that replied was NF.

reply to TBusiness
I heard google/youtube does this as well.

Anyone have any experience with those?

If there's anything that pushes a lot of traffic on us, it's those two in top ranks.

EDIT- Same goes for Apple TV. But I don't see Apple playing nice with anyone.

I was not aware of Google providing these appliances. I'll contact them to see what I get.

Right now I'm working on a deal with Roku on reselling their devices for "iptv" until mine is up and running next year (working with another large IPTV backend provider to deploy mine) which is one of the main reasons I'd like to get the content as close to the customer as possible without maxing out any large links. This also comes with working against a large local cable company (Buckeye) but shouldn't become an issue since they just capped (with high overages) all customers across the board - both business and residential customers alike.

I have more netflix traffic out of my house in a month than your network does. Just a little perspective.
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Ex-Tech at the Beach.
I speak for myself, not my former employer.