a question re: akamai servers

G

Grouter

Executive Member
Joined
Sep 7, 2007
Messages
5,988
Reaction score
3,849
I use firefox with the flagfox extension. More and more often lately I'm noticing a lot of international sites, particularly UK and Australian ones, show as being hosted in South Africa. I realise this is because of the akamai server thing, but it seems they load quicker since showing as SA sites as well. What I'd like to know is are the sites entire contents cached on the local akamai server, and updated continuously causing the site to seem quicker? Or is the akamai server just bouncing / re-routing the feed from overseas, tricking flagfox into believing the site is local?

I don't bother with routesentry and splitting local and international (I always have enough bandwidth for the month :) ) so I don't know if the sites are still acessible via local-only (capped) accounts.
 
It means that they are actually being loaded from servers which are physically located within the borders of South Africa.
 
Garyvdh said:
It means that they are actually being loaded from servers which are physically located within the borders of South Africa.
Click to expand...

So the site content is cached on the local servers? So that means the sites should be accessible to local-only accounts? :cool:
 
Grouter said:
So the site content is cached on the local servers? So that means the sites should be accessible to local-only accounts? :cool:
Click to expand...

Yes, there is an Akamai Server farm hosted by IS in Rosebank I think. There was an article on it here on MyBroadband a few years ago.
 
Not so long ago, The Sydney Morning Herald started showing as being hosted in ZA. That's when there was a definite speed improvement browsing the site as well. I wonder if they (the international site owners) pay IS / akamai for local hosting?
 
Telkom also host akamai servers. I'm on SAIX account and a tracert for the Sydney morning Herald completes at

wblv-akamai-144.telkom-ipnet.co.za [165.165.39.144]
whois points this to SAIX.

I wonder how many other ISP's have their own akamai servers? Maybe a Neotel user could check too.
 
Using a local DNS server will serve data from local Akamai servers,
use OpenDNS server located internationally serves data from international DNS servers location

Local IS DNS server 168.210.2.2

ping download2.vmware.com
PING e751.d.akamaiedge.net (88.221.243.51) 56(84) bytes of data. (located on IS network)
64 bytes from a88-221-243-51.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com (88.221.243.51): icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=37.2 ms
Click to expand...

OpenDNS server 208.67.222.222 (sorry capped so using local only account,hnece long ping times)
ping download2.vmware.com
PING e751.d.akamaiedge.net (72.246.35.51) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from a72-246-35-51.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com (72.246.35.51): icmp_seq=1 ttl=45 time=3527 ms
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Local is ???????

kilos said:
Using a local DNS server will serve data from local Akamai servers,
use OpenDNS server located internationally serves data from international DNS servers location
Local IS DNS server 168.210.2.2
OpenDNS server 208.67.222.222 (sorry capped so using local only account,hnece long ping times)
Click to expand...

As has been mentioned PING is not a true indication of the pereformance of a DNS server.

Rather download the little DNS utility from the GRC website

DNSBenchmark


MW
 
MidnightWizard said:
As has been mentioned PING is not a true indication of the pereformance of a DNS server.

Rather download the little DNS utility from the GRC website

DNSBenchmark

MW
Click to expand...
Thanks MW, I was merely indicating local & international access to the Akamai servers.
Will check the utility out
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X