Akamai Case
1. Why does Akamai need to geographically disperse its servers to deliver its customers’ Web content?
This is the main concept of Akamai, they disperse web content (such as videos or pictures) and store it in certain places around the world so when people are looking for said content they can retrieve it from a nearby location. This increases the speed with which web pages load and decreases the issue with latency as people have less patience for waiting when it comes to online content. Akamai makes sure your content is as close to your customers as possible.
2. If you wanted to deliver software content over the Internet, would you sign up for Akamai’s service? What alternatives exist?
Depending on where the traffic to my website comes from I would certainly make use of Akamai's service. If there is plenty of global attraction then I believe it's important to give them fast delivery times on your content. Those few seconds of faster content can make the difference between a loyal and passing client. The case gives no real alternative and I can't come up with one myself to be honest. Unless off course you wish to simply have a web page that loads much slower than your competitors. Perhaps the current succes of cloud computing will bring some competitors to the market in which Akamai operates. However if most traffic comes from places near the server that I use I wouldn't make use of their service simply because the speed would already be acceptable. But I believe that any widespread e-service or internet content provider should make use of either Akamai's or a similar service.
3. What advantages does an advertiser derive from using Akamai’s service? What kinds of products might benefit from this kind of service?
By using Akamai's service you can guarantue that your customers have access to your content at a decent speed. If your video, picture or other content would take too much time to load then users would simply close that window and leave it be. Any type of internet content distributor can benefit greatly from Akamai's service. Especially services that experience a lot of traffic and need multiple servers to handle the load that they face at peak times. Otherwise their content would seem sluggish and people would find a different service at a higher speed. Even governments can benefit from these services as for example the Belgian Tax on Web service sometimes fails to work as needed near the deadline of the taxes. By using Akamai the load the servers could take would greatly increase and the failure to load would not happen. This counts for any major event that causes a high amount of traffic, the case itself spoke of the Olympic Games, but I believe the Football World Cup finals could give the same issues if there isn't enough support to cover all possible viewers.
4. Why don’t major business firms distribute their videos using P2P networks like BitTorrent?
Akamai offers a much safer way of distribution. In other ways there is also the legal issues that sites like BitTorrent sometimes face. How legal is the distribution of certain content? If you work with a centralized system of distribution it's easier to analyse how far it has been distributed and by who.
5. Do you think Internet users should be charged based on the amount of bandwidth they consume, or on a tiered plan where users would pay in rough proportion to their usage?
You could do it this way, but then you're talking about the whole SOPA issue that North America had a few years ago and the concept of net neutrality. In this case companies could pay more for a better internet service and the ability to get a larger portion of internet usage. However this way ISP's could simply give these companies the highest speeds and leave the normal consumer with a much more sluggish experience unless they want to pay top dollar to their ISP for their internet connection. I believe equality is an important concept here where everybody should get the same speeds no matter what their usage is. Because once you start with paying for your bandwidth there is no knowing how far the ISP's will take it in augmenting their prices. For big business this could mean that they can offer amazingly fast content availability when using their service. But the run of the mill consumer would be facing slower connection and usage speeds for all other sites simply because the augmented ISP costs could ramp up insanely fast.
This is the main concept of Akamai, they disperse web content (such as videos or pictures) and store it in certain places around the world so when people are looking for said content they can retrieve it from a nearby location. This increases the speed with which web pages load and decreases the issue with latency as people have less patience for waiting when it comes to online content. Akamai makes sure your content is as close to your customers as possible.
2. If you wanted to deliver software content over the Internet, would you sign up for Akamai’s service? What alternatives exist?
Depending on where the traffic to my website comes from I would certainly make use of Akamai's service. If there is plenty of global attraction then I believe it's important to give them fast delivery times on your content. Those few seconds of faster content can make the difference between a loyal and passing client. The case gives no real alternative and I can't come up with one myself to be honest. Unless off course you wish to simply have a web page that loads much slower than your competitors. Perhaps the current succes of cloud computing will bring some competitors to the market in which Akamai operates. However if most traffic comes from places near the server that I use I wouldn't make use of their service simply because the speed would already be acceptable. But I believe that any widespread e-service or internet content provider should make use of either Akamai's or a similar service.
3. What advantages does an advertiser derive from using Akamai’s service? What kinds of products might benefit from this kind of service?
By using Akamai's service you can guarantue that your customers have access to your content at a decent speed. If your video, picture or other content would take too much time to load then users would simply close that window and leave it be. Any type of internet content distributor can benefit greatly from Akamai's service. Especially services that experience a lot of traffic and need multiple servers to handle the load that they face at peak times. Otherwise their content would seem sluggish and people would find a different service at a higher speed. Even governments can benefit from these services as for example the Belgian Tax on Web service sometimes fails to work as needed near the deadline of the taxes. By using Akamai the load the servers could take would greatly increase and the failure to load would not happen. This counts for any major event that causes a high amount of traffic, the case itself spoke of the Olympic Games, but I believe the Football World Cup finals could give the same issues if there isn't enough support to cover all possible viewers.
4. Why don’t major business firms distribute their videos using P2P networks like BitTorrent?
Akamai offers a much safer way of distribution. In other ways there is also the legal issues that sites like BitTorrent sometimes face. How legal is the distribution of certain content? If you work with a centralized system of distribution it's easier to analyse how far it has been distributed and by who.
5. Do you think Internet users should be charged based on the amount of bandwidth they consume, or on a tiered plan where users would pay in rough proportion to their usage?
You could do it this way, but then you're talking about the whole SOPA issue that North America had a few years ago and the concept of net neutrality. In this case companies could pay more for a better internet service and the ability to get a larger portion of internet usage. However this way ISP's could simply give these companies the highest speeds and leave the normal consumer with a much more sluggish experience unless they want to pay top dollar to their ISP for their internet connection. I believe equality is an important concept here where everybody should get the same speeds no matter what their usage is. Because once you start with paying for your bandwidth there is no knowing how far the ISP's will take it in augmenting their prices. For big business this could mean that they can offer amazingly fast content availability when using their service. But the run of the mill consumer would be facing slower connection and usage speeds for all other sites simply because the augmented ISP costs could ramp up insanely fast.