Google, Facebook, YouTube all local
It is common knowledge that Google has had an established network presence in South Africa since 2009, serving content like certain YouTube videos and Google search results from locally hosted servers.
Until recently the home pages for Google, YouTube and Facebook resolved to international IP addresses, but this is starting to change. Many of these websites now resolve locally (depending on your network provider), offering a far better experience to South African website users.
The exact location of Google’s Global Cache servers are typically not communicated, and although it has been published that the search giant has a presence on the TENET, Internet Solutions and Vodacom Business networks these providers usually don’t market this information.
Telkom has however confirmed that it is hosting Google Global Cache (GGC) servers on its network, and that Google.com was connected to SAIX’s Rosebank POP on 30th April 2010 and Belville POP around mid-May 2010.
Good news is that Telkom Internet subscribers can now use local bandwidth to access services like Google Search and YouTube.
Local Akamai and Content Delivery Networks
The Facebook website seems to be served from local Akamai servers which transparently mirror content and is used by content providers worldwide to bring content closer to users.
It makes sense for both network operators like Telkom/SAIX and content providers like Facebook to use Distributed Content Delivery Networks (DCDNs) to host content in the country in which it is used.
With locally hosted content the network provider saves on expensive international bandwidth while on-net hosting means better service levels to content providers and ultimately end users.
Content providers are typically charged for use of a CDN while the network providers must only provide rackspace and adequate bandwidth to get CDN servers on their network.
There may be other business models in the CDN market, but content providers are eager to get their content as close to the client as possible and are willing to fund these servers as it also limits the load on their own primary hosting infrastructure.
Big websites with a local presence << Do you know of any other ones?
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