nanog mailing list archives

Re: Akamai Edgekey issues ?


From: Jay Ashworth <jra () baylink com>
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2013 11:07:38 -0400 (EDT)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick () ianai net>

Not a case of "broken" traffic engineering at all.

Sure it is.

It's assuming that the geographic location of a customer resolver
server
has anything whatever to do with the geographic location of the end
node,
which it's not in fact a valid proxy for.

It isn't? How wrong is this assumption? Be specific. How far off is
it, for how many users?

Well, the vast majority of wireless users, for one: Sprint can't decide
whether I'm in Miami, Orlando, or Lenexa, Kansas on any given day.

More properly: people whose websites geolocate and whom I access
over Sprint 3g/Wimax/LTE.  They're probably geolocating by the actual
assigned IP address, but it's roughly the same thing.

Perhaps look at the other side. Assumptions must be made. What
assumptions would be better in the real world? What percentage of
users are "closer" to anycast nodes? What are the real-world
performance differences using this method vs. other methods?

I didn't say there was a *good* answer to this, and in fact, I don't
think there is.  

Saying "not in fact a valid proxy" without hard data is not useful.
What data do you have to prove your thesis?

Akamai seems to perform well for the vast majority of users. Or so I
believe, but I fully admit I am biased. :)

Heh.  :-)

That said, always happy to be educated. If you have data, let us know.

Well played, Patrick.  No, it's anecdotal.  But the percentage of wireless
users who are of necessity often nowhere near their DNS resolvers certainly
contributes to the percentages.

There are people who are manually stuck on the wrong network's servers, or
those who are configured to 4.4.4.4/8.8.8.8/4.2.2.1 by IT people (or themselves)
or to OpenDNS or the like, but I'd be surprised if those were more than 5% 
overall.

It's mostly wireless.  And that's a lot.

Is it relevant to Akamai?  Possibly not.

For Akamai, the proxy may be Good Enough.  Just so we remember that not everyone
is Akamai.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra () baylink com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com         2000 Land Rover DII
St Petersburg FL USA               #natog                      +1 727 647 1274


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