I think it's pretty common for service providers to be using DNS trickery to get to the closer, faster, less cost caches.. :) Craig Spiers | Network Manager Solarix Networks Limited DDI: +64 9 974 4753 | Mob: +64 21 857 183 | Office: +64 9 974 4750 | FAX: +64 9 974 4760 Email: craig.spiers(a)solarix.co.nz | Web: www.solarix.net.nz CAUTION: This email is confidential. If it is not intended for you please do not read, distribute or copy it or any attachments. Please notify the sender by return email and delete the original message and any attachments.Any views expressed in this email may be those of the individual sender and may not necessarily reflect the views of Solarix Networks Limited. Please consider the environment before printing this email! Disclaimer added by CodeTwo Exchange Rules http://www.codetwo.com -----Original Message----- From: nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Lincoln Reid Sent: Wednesday, 14 July 2010 1:08 p.m. To: Patrick W. Gilmore Cc: NZNOG Mailing List Subject: Re: [nznog] Akamai Questions On Tue, 2010-07-13 at 19:34 -0400, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
Well, I'm still busy, but sometimes things have to make it to the top of the stack whether you are busy or not. Besides, World Cup is over,
so I am a little less busy. (Or at least that's what I keep telling myself. :)
Thanks for the reply.
But instead of answering a 6-week-old question, I prefer to just start fresh. So.... What would you like to know?
I was one of the original posters in the thread a while back. I am a network engineer for a small provider (AS18119). We build the tricky bits for a bunch of corporates and other business organisations, often we sell transit to them as part of their solution. My question is, is there a method I can use to influence which Akamai cabinet serves up content to our networks and downstream networks? I'll try to explain the background behind this which I suspect maybe unique to NZ, or may be common with some other countries. I think alot of the smaller ISPs in the country will be in a similar boat to us. We have free peering with most networks within New Zealand. We have paid peering circuits ( at something like $150 / mbps ) with two larger NZ telco's. And finally we have multiple paid transit services with other international providers ( at something like $250 / mbps ). The situation we have currently is that the default Akamai instance we get given when we make a request is over one of the most expensive circuits for us and it is outside the country. Both of the larger NZ telco's have their own Akamai cabinets, that with ( some slightly distasteful ) dns hackery we can use, and appear to work well with lower latency and at a lower cost. Also one of the NZ ISP's that we have free peering with ( Callplus ) have their own Akamai instance that we can access at zero cost and has the best latency. Ideally, we would like to use that one when ever possible. I had a bunch of feedback from my original query from network folk that were whacking in forwarders to other peoples DNS servers to use their local caches to pick better ( either $ or ms ) circuits for them. I'm sure that there will be side effects from this at times, but the trade off is worth it for them. Cheers, -- Lincoln Reid Head of Networks ACSData - AS18119 lincoln(a)acsdata.co.nz Phone: +64 4 939 2200 Fax: +64 4 939 2201 _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog