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Out on the 'Net
Dwight Gibbs, Foo' Bar
 A category-breaking service? That would have to be Akamai Technologies' FreeFlow Internet content delivery service.
FreeFlow analyzes Internet congestion and intelligently adjusts Domain Name System almost constantly so it can quickly and reliably deliver content. The data analysis involves some heavy algorithmic lifting that "is beyond all but a handful of the world's foremost scientists and mathematicians," says Gartner Group. In addition, Akamai has more than 900 servers in more than 25 networks. This architecture makes FreeFlow outrageously robust and scalable.
Quick look
FreeFlow
Akamai Technologies
Pricing: Usage charges are priced according to megabits per second of content served. Customers commit to a minimum usage level and may "burst" above this commitment. For example, a committed information rate (CIR) of 1M to 20M bit/sec costs $1,995 per megabit/second.
Market status: Commercially available since April 1999.
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| What's so special about FreeFlow? All it does is provide caching, right? Wrong. What's special is coverage, performance, control and information.
With FreeFlow, you don't have to be concerned about which ISPs use caching. All customers benefit from FreeFlow, and the performance gains are phenomenal. During the week of Sept. 5, for example, FreeFlow served www.fool.com's content more than five times faster than our Web servers (as measured by Keynote).
With FreeFlow, I can control what content is and isn't cached. I don't have to worry about which ISPs are honoring my time-to-live specifications. I also can get a better handle on what content is being served, when it is being served and to whom.
Sounds good in theory, but how about in practice? The Motley Fool has been using FreeFlow since May, and it rocks. I see three main benefits:
- Better customer experience. The Fool site feels faster because the graphics (about 80% of the bits making up a Web page) are delivered by servers close to our customers over the fastest available routes. Customers e-mail us saying our content feels faster, and our Web site analysis tools show improved performance.
- Decreased hardware requirements. Each time a customer requests a Web page, a Web server must serve, on average, one HTML file and nine or so graphics. By using FreeFlow, I've off-loaded about 90% of my Web serving because my Web servers only have to offer up the HTML. Last month, FreeFlow served up more than 260 million hits for www.fool.com. This means I do not have to increase my server power nearly as quickly as I might otherwise.
- Decreased bandwidth requirements. Remember the 260 million hits my servers didn't have to serve last month? I didn't have to ship them out of my site, either, which means a lower load on my servers, switches, load balancers and routers. By how much? Let's assume each graphic file is 5K bytes. Do the math - that's a lot of bandwidth.
Related links
Gibbs is chief techie geek at Motley Fool. He can be reached at fool@nww.com.
Foo' Bar archive
Freeflow overview from Akamai
10 to watch: Akamai
Company profile. Network World, 4/26/99.
Footprint overview from Sandpiper
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Fast relief for slow Web sites
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