WEB Speed

Posted: 09/2001

WEB Speed
The Hot Value-Add for Content Delivery Channels
By Khali Henderson

What if you--you and the other 1,132,400 readers of The New York Times--had to traverse congested highways and city streets to the newspaper's headquarters at 229 W. 43rd St. in New York City every morning to get your copy of the day's news?

Well, for certain, there would be a line and a significant wait. The good news is that every day there would be fewer and fewer customers in line. The bad news is that there soon would be too few of them to support the publication, and it would fold.

Obviously, this is not the way to run an information business. Yet it is analogous to what happens on the Internet every day.

When a browser requests information from a website, it travels the Internet--potentially crossing hundreds or thousands of networks and peering points--to get to the origin server where the data are stored. "To download one page, you might cross the Internet 45 times," explains Nancy Voke, director of product marketing for Akamai Technologies Inc. "You're doing that, and at the same time, there might be 100,000 other people doing the same thing."

That, says Voke, creates what communications veterans are fond of calling a "bottleneck" at the origin server.

Going back to the newspaper analogy, The New York Times has set up a distribution network for its paper to avoid a potential bottleneck at its home office. The national edition is printed at 13 sites and is distributed to readers through newsstands and, for many, to their front porch.

Information dissemination in the Internet age is beginning to follow a similar model using specialized content-delivery networks (CDNs) like those operated by Akamai and rival Digital Island Inc.

"The way content delivery works, in its stripped-down sense, is that you put servers--many hundreds and thousands of them--around the world, and they are connected up to a company's website--what's usually called an origin server at a hosting site--to pre-place information that is frequently accessed," says David Radoff, director of corporate communications for Digital Island. "So what you are doing in effect is, instead of [requiring people to go] to the home office every time [they] want to get an article, you up newsstands that are close to where people can pick them up and, therefore, you do not have a crunch at the door and a lot of queuing effect."

CDNs generally are composed of hundreds of small caching servers placed at the edge of the Internet, or, in the case of Mirror Image Internet Inc., strategically placed servers that aggregate traffic at content access points. In a classic scenario, the servers would deliver the graphic elements of a website to speed download times. CDN operators also typically monitor the network and route traffic in an optimal way. More recently, CDNs also have begun to process dynamic content, streaming media and even transactions at the edge.

"Plain vanilla caching solutions are giving way to content distribution management systems from Network Appliance and Inktomi, which enable caches to assemble web pages dynamically based on users' cookies," says Seema Williams, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc. "WARP Solutions even offers a product--the edge transaction accelerator--that distributes the process of transactions to the edge of the network, helping websites scale up to user demand."

CDN services, which are projected by the High-Tech Resource Consulting Group LLC to grow to more than $2 billion by 2003, are going to be offered increasingly through or by resellers that include network service providers, managed hosting providers and systems integrators. There are fewer and fewer stand-alone CDNs; witness the recent acquisition of Digital Island by Cable & Wireless Communications plc. In addition, the leading CDN operators all have reseller or partner programs (see table, below). In addition, there are converging content-peering initiatives that promise to facilitate wholesale traffic exchange.

This is because it's simply very difficult to replicate an effective CDN. "When you look at content-delivery services, one of the problems with competing is this ubiquitous closeness to the customer," says Neal Goldman, director of Internet computing strategies for The Yankee Group. "So if I only have caches on my own network, that's not providing that good of coverage to the ultimate content owner as the Akamai network."

Akamai announced in mid-July that in second quarter 2001 it extended its network to include 11,689 servers, up from 9,743 in the first quarter. Akamai's servers now are deployed within more than 820 networks in 62 countries, including Internet backbone providers, ISPs, cable and DSL providers, and other telecommunications facilities.

Akamai is widely regarded as the market-leading CDN, much to the consternation of executives at Digital Island, which has 2,550 servers in 327 networks in 34 countries. Philosophically, technologically and operationally, the two companies are far apart (further, a lawsuit filed by Akamai against Digital Island for patent infringement is expected to go to trial this month). Although Akamai espouses moving all web activity to the edge, Digital Island does not. While Digital Island supports network interoperability, Akamai does not.

Kurt Merriweather, senior marketing manager at Digital Island, attributes the differing approach to the nature of the companies' respective assets: "The asset that Akamai has is their server deployment and the software they use to run that asset, whereas Digital Island as a company has hosting assets, network assets and content-delivery assets. Given the three bottlenecks that exist on the Internet--the origin server, the Internet backbone itself and the edge, there are different ways to optimize performance on a website. We have different dials that we can turn in order to improve the performance of a website, so it's not all about getting everything to the edge."

Akamai's Voke says, "We don't believe that anyone else's solution helps you solve delivery across those four bottlenecks [first mile, last mile, backbone and peering points] that exist in the Internet. You can purchase a lot more hardware. You can mirror your sites. ... You can go out and buy a lot of bandwidth, but that doesn't help you relay your information over the Internet during the busiest periods of the day. That doesn't help the end consumer see their content any faster. By placing servers around the edge of the Internet and intelligently routing content around the bottlenecks and constantly taking a real-time pulse of what is the health of the Internet right now, ... we have a solution that allows you to do that."

While there are advocates on both sides of the edge debate, Akamai claims the lead in the network buildout race and downplays competitive efforts at content peering. "We have found originally [content peering] had a lot of uptake in the space, more so from the press than potentially by customers," Voke says. "They have not proven that they can implement this type of a solution. And we continue to improve our entire network and optimize the operation of our network, and we feel we have a major head start here."

Voke's observations are not far off the mark. Content Bridge, an alliance of more than 20 companies formed in August 2000 to facilitate multilateral peering, has switched operators three times in the past year--from Adero Inc. to Inktomi, and now to Digital Island, which took the reins in mid-July only to find that some of the initial membership had yet to sign contracts formalizing their participation in the traffic exchange.

"One of the problems with peering is that nobody likes it as a business," says The Yankee Group's Goldman. "I could let you onto my network and you could let me onto your network, but I am afraid that you are going to take more than I am going to get. ... That has been the logic so far."

Content Bridge allows hosting providers, content-delivery service providers and access providers to share usage of networks at the content and application level. Each Content Bridge hosting provider originates content for delivery to all other members, each CDN delivers all traffic sent to it and each access provider terminates traffic destined for its subscriber base.

"So, long story short, Inktomi decided for multiple reasons, but the chief one being that in order to keep the stewardship of Content Bridge, they would have had to build their own content delivery network, [that they] had to select someone to be the primary operator, which is the default content delivery network, if you will, where all the content gets routed," explains Digital Island's Radoff.

Digital Island is responsible for billing and settlement, maintaining the integrity of the Content Bridge network and ensuring QoS across peer networks, says Merriweather. He adds that the company will use the existing infrastructure of its own CDN, Footprint, to execute against these obligations and will earn a percentage-based transaction fee for its trouble.

The takeover may be the needed boost for Content Bridge, says Merriweather, noting that now there are provisions for performance measurement and no vendor-specific hardware requirements--two of the reasons for slow traction among the group.

Consortium member KPNQwest NV expressed public support for the transfer of power. "We believe public content peering will grow rapidly and greatly support Digital Island's decision to take Content Bridge to the next level through the elements of their content-peering initiatives, said company CTO Julf Helsingius in a prepared statement.

Another boon may be the recent teaming of Content Bridge with the Content Alliance, a 100-member group initiated by Cisco Systems Inc. to create technical standards for interoperability of CDNs. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has formed a Content Internetworking (CDI) Working Group jointly led by members of both groups to concentrate on request routing to the delivery CDN, content distribution between peering CDNs, and usage accounting/billing settlement among peering CDNs. At press time in late July, the working group planned to convene at the 51st IETF meeting, in London in early August.

Digital Island's public peering activities are paired with a new private peering initiative focused on creating direct relationships between the CDN operator and telcos, content-delivery companies, hosting providers, streaming-media services providers and ISPs.

The Private Content Exchange (PCX) program is geared to service providers that operate a regional CDN and want to leverage Digital Island's reach when a request for content is made outside of their network. While similar to Content Bridge, PCX allows for customization and added features, such as policy-based routing, intelligent redirection and cache coupling, which allow carrier caches to be managed by the Footprint network.

The PCX initiative is a departure from the company's previous channel strategy. "We had a reseller program last year to offer wholesale content-delivery services that was strictly focused on anybody who wanted to resell Footprint," says Merriweather. "We have since modified that program so that it is focused primarily on service providers."

Mirror Image also has leveraged peering arrangements for its growing footprint, which currently connects 22 cities in North America, Europe and Asia. Its resale program, however, remains focused on more traditional partners such as web hosting companies, managed service providers, systems integrators, consultants, etc.

The Mirror Image channel program has received a shot in the arm with the company's acquisition of ClearWay Technologies earlier this year. ClearWay has relied exclusively on indirect channels to deliver its FireSite content delivery technology. The FireSite service includes an intelligent software agent that can be deployed on a customer's web server in as little as 10 minutes. Once installed, the agent software automatically selects the content that can benefit from acceleration and immediately pushes it to Mirror Image's InstaContent CDN.

Hal Bennett, Mirror Image vice president of business development, says the company has about half a dozen resale partners at present. This low number in contrast to Akamai's 70, is by design, he says, explaining the company is seeking relationships with "depth of capability, performance and, ultimately, revenue."

Currently, Bennett says about 50 percent of the companies revenues are attributable to its partners.

Akamai also reports a significant and increasing contribution from its partners. It claims resellers generated 22 percent of its revenues in the second quarter, up from 17 percent in first quarter. Voke says resellers are a "critical part of our go-to-market strategy."

The company has two flavors of resellers--traditional and OEM. Traditional resellers offer a jointly branded product to content providers, while the OEMs incorporate the Akamai platform as a component of a complete service. Voke says 99.5 percent of Akamai's resellers fall into the traditional category. Among them are Digex Inc., IBM Corp., EDS, KPNQwest, Telefonica S.A. and new client XO Communications Inc.

"We saw this as very complementary to our existing product offering," says Natasha Burkoff, dedicated hosting product manager at XO. "Some of our sales people were coming back to us saying this would be a great thing for us to be able to sell along with dedicated hosting. For us, it's a nice bundled solution."

Burkoff explains that as a hosting and network provider, XO can "consult with clients to make sure that they have sufficient infrastructure. We control how much bandwidth goes into our data centers and how traffic moves across our backbone and our peering relationships, but once it leaves our backbone, it is out of our control. Generally, traffic will need to go across at least one, if not multiple, ISP backbones before it ultimately reaches the end user. So I see value in moving content closer to the end user. It is something that is going to increase the performance. Anything that is going to increase the performance for our customers, obviously in our minds, is a good thing."

For now, XO does not operate any of its own caching infrastructure, and it relies exclusively on Akamai. "If you look at Akamai and how much money they have invested in developing their technology and building their network, anything that we did would be on a much smaller scale," says Burkoff. "So for us, we thought it made more sense to leverage their resources and their technology and their expertise and add that to our existing channels."

The hosting and network services provider signed on with Akamai in June, but by July it already had clients waiting to be turned up on the service. Burkoff estimated that a CDN reseller could earn between 30 percent and 45 percent--although reseller relationships with Akamai vary in complexity and structure.

Akamai's Voke says network service providers like XO have a particularly strategic fit: "We work with them in a multifaceted manner in that we place servers in their networks, we purchase bandwidth from them and at the same time they resell our services. So we have some very strategic relationships there and we expect that to continue to grow in the future."

Forrester analyst Williams says that companies like AT&T Corp. and Genuity Inc. will continue to turn to Akamai for content delivery. "Private peering arrangements between carriers like Qwest Communications International Inc. and WorldCom Inc. will chip away at Akamai's position, but plenty of Internet traffic is carried by smaller access providers that will be shut out of such peering relationships."