Hello everybody,

I am searching for Akamai customers who have more than 20 TB traffic per month.

I have another 10 TB per month and would like to put all this traffic together to get a better pricing for both!

Look forward to all suggestions!

Considering you're only pushing out 10TB, have you considered using another content delivery network that might give you decent pricing even for smaller amounts of traffic? Or is your data extremely important, are you streaming video files, using them for downloads?

I tested very many CDNs, and Akamai (unfortunately) is the only one offering a highly stable and 98% fast http delivery.

We have only HTTP delivery of static files, but the speed is very very important for our application

How much are akamai priced for you at that level? (just regular figure)

Monthly commitment: 0,70 US$
Yearly commitment: 1,10 US$

But I am sure, that the larger you get - the more negotiation power you have. And if somebody is an Akamai customer and has >20 TB, my further 10 TB would for sure add some price pressure.

Only as an idea: also several websites can join us. For example 4 websites with each 10 TB would make already a very good deal.

I know that with around 40 TB together per month they can go down to around 0,5 US$ what would be already pretty interesting!

happyuser,

Just go to panthercdn and they'll give you $.23/Gb on that level....

Thank you for the advice :-) We benchmarked them already 15 times and still are not happy with their stability of speed and the speed.

So we really would prefer Akamai

happyuser,

Just go to panthercdn and they'll give you $.23/Gb on that level....

Apples and oranges. You really cannot compare the level of quality between akamai and panther. He obviously has found the right level of service and is sticking with it, but when you can save up some money, why not try, eh? :)

Apples and oranges. You really cannot compare the level of quality between akamai and panther. He obviously has found the right level of service and is sticking with it, but when you can save up some money, why not try, eh? :)

If you are just serving static content then yes I can compare the two as they offer the same service. If you really think that extra 2 ms is going to affect you web users while serving static content I think we need to get a reality check.

At any rate I wish the OP best of luck, it seems that if you can't afford to do the Akami solution on your own to move on and go elsewhere.

@RossH - I have to disagree. In France we get around 30% higher download rates (we do not care about ping). In Germany we get around 20% higher download with Akamai. And in UK we can around 10% higher download.

This is why, I am searching for other Akamai users.

Monthly commitment: 0,70 US$
Yearly commitment: 1,10 US$

But I am sure, that the larger you get - the more negotiation power you have. And if somebody is an Akamai customer and has >20 TB, my further 10 TB would for sure add some price pressure.

Only as an idea: also several websites can join us. For example 4 websites with each 10 TB would make already a very good deal.

I know that with around 40 TB together per month they can go down to around 0,5 US$ what would be already pretty interesting!

Am I reading that correctly, $70/month?

I always thought Akamai was a lot more than that.

Yeah I'd recommend you check out other CDN providers as well. Unless you are up in the multi-gigabit commmit level Akamai's pricing absolutely blows.

@amex - those are prices per Gbyte.

You really can do so much better price wise. What other CDN's have you looked at or tried?

@amex - those are prices per Gbyte.

So for 10,000 GB (10TB) you are paying roughly: 10,000x$70= $700,000/month? :eek:

I'm assuming it's $.70/gig not $70/gig

i am not paying anything at Akamai. Their offer is 10 TB = 7000 US$

So if you are just looking for offers to merge your traffic with someone (I don't believe Akami will let you) this should go in the offers forum, not the dedicated server forum.

So for 10,000 GB (10TB) you are paying roughly: 10,000x$70= $700,000/month? :eek:

$0.70/GB, not $70/GB. Comes out more like $7,000/month.


To the OP, what other CDN providers have you benchmarked?

We benchmarked Akamai, Limelight, Internap, Pantherexpress, Cachefly, Level3, Interoute, Peer1 and TV1

How exactly did you "benchmark" them?

Sounds like you have tested out many of the CDN's then. You might want to check out BitGravity as well.

I guess the question though, is the "better" performance your seeing with Akamai worth the extra $4-$5,000 than what you'd paid elsewhere?

i am not paying anything at Akamai. Their offer is 10 TB = 7000 US$

Who are you using now? how much are you currently paying?

Currently we offer our services (website) only in Germany, that is why for the moment it is sufficient to have 4 servers in Germany as a cluster and thats it. We pay around 0,14 US$ / GByte for premium german traffic.

Our largest problem is, that it is crucial for our webservice, that the download speed is above excellent! It is not sufficient JUST to deliver http files. We need excellent download rates. The Akamai prices are just astronomic by themselves, but they seem to be the only who deliver at excellent speed.

Our benchmark? Very easy: we have 3 locations in Germany and 2 in France from which we start at different day times a simple download with a download manager. We we write down the speed and stability.

$0.70/GB, not $70/GB. Comes out more like $7,000/month.


Ahh. I misunderstood happyuser. Thanks, that does sound more like it ;)

Monthly commitment: 0,70 US$
Yearly commitment: 1,10 US$


How is it possible that the yearly commitment is more expensive than the monthly commitment?

If you do not mind me asking, how much does other CDN providers, that you have tried, charges?

10,000GB x$0.70 = $7000/month. ;-)

So if you are just looking for offers to merge your traffic with someone (I don't believe Akami will let you) this should go in the offers forum, not the dedicated server forum.

Moved, so no one gets in trouble. ;)

Hi all,

I hope I can help a little on this.

First of all I apologies...but I'm a supplier...yes I know that's probably frowned upon, but I really do hope to help :@)

I work for Interoute and I can see that you have run some benchmarks on us and have compared us to Akamai, however depending on what you require I'm fairly certain we can deliver your CDN at much better rates whilst retaining excellent service to your customers.

Akamai does things fairly differently to most CDN's (ours included), as they have the local caching servers it can mean that the local speeds are sometimes that little bit quicker, however the end user experience is usually pretty much the same. The downside of Akamai's service is that is uses local caching servers (!), basically by them doing this it means that their costs are significantly higher when compared to your standard CDN.

Our CDN sits in the middle of our network (both London and Amsterdam) and connects out over our own core 10Gb/s network, this in turn is directly peered with ever DSL provider in Europe (the key demographic of downloader's of content) and also just about every other large Global IP network.

We can defiantly compete at the level of all of the prices suggested, and if you need further information, or even a free trial account, please send me an email at william.morrish(AT)interoute.com.

Once again apologies for jumping on here as a supplier, but I saw the thread appear in Google news alerts and thought I'd say hello!

If anyone has any questions please send them on over!

Cheers

Will Morrish
Media Account Director
Interoute.com

Hello Mr. Morrish!

Thank you very much for your offer! As I already mentioned, we also benchmarked Interoute by using your Mediamanager trial account.

From France the speed was at around 65% of Akamai and in Germany between 40-65% compared to local hosting / Akamai.

I fully agree, that for somebody who just wants its files served - your solution is great and the pricing interesting.

But we need high speed (means, at least 90% compared to a local), not just 60%.

If you want, you can post a test file on your system and just give us here a link, so that other customers can test it for their internet connection and compare it to e.g. Akamai.

Regards

Cut a 0 amex ;)

Hi Happyuser,

I would be interest to see you test results in detail as I wouldn't expect there to be that much difference. If possible please email me over the results of your tests and a traceroute.

May I ask what content you are distributing (Media / software / updates etc) and the actual end user requirement. With TCP there is a limit with latency and actual throughput but this (certainly within Europe) far outstrips the speeds of DSL at the moment. While it is great if you can use 100% of your DSL pipe to download, its rare that someone actually has a need to do this.

I have uploaded 3 files to the CDN for test downloads, if you would like me to put up some streaming content I can do this as well, links below:
10MB file : del.interoute.com/?id=3fd6198c-4d37-49b8-8e9a-9dbe49f664ae&delivery=download
100MB file : del.interoute.com/?id=908fce48-bae6-4bb3-b024-cec4d7bd9da7&delivery=download
1GB file : del.interoute.com/?id=4abd0703-3cdc-435e-8e85-f7305623b25b&delivery=download

In addition to the CDN if you want to give the system a further trial please have a play with Interoute Express (interouteexpress.com) which is our free file delivery platform for email.

Best regards,

Will

Thank you for the test files! Our files are all static (5-10 Mbyte size)

Here are my results (3 Mbit/s SDSL dedicated, Paris, France)

Here are the download results (Interoute on the left with 220 Kbyte/s, Akamai on the right with 290 Kbyte/s):

http://img29.picoodle.com/img/img29/4/2/13/f_Picture1m_b9bf98b.png

Traceroute to del.interoute.com

traceroute to exodus.interoutemediaservices.com (212.23.58.125), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 1.462 ms 0.574 ms 0.501 ms
2 reverse.completel.net 1.229 ms 1.351 ms 2.220 ms
3 reverse.completel.net 182.111 ms 211.126 ms 5.658 ms
4 213.30.129.73 6.902 ms 5.034 ms 5.556 ms
5 reverse.completel.net 15.023 ms 5.351 ms 15.080 ms
6 completel.gw.te-9-1.er1.rb.par.neotelecoms.com (83.167.40.249) 94.984 ms 4.993 ms 8.774 ms
7 te2-4.mpr1.cdg9.fr.above.net (64.125.23.53) 6.104 ms ge5-2.mpr2.cdg2.fr.above.net (64.125.23.86) 4.647 ms te2-4.mpr1.cdg9.fr.above.net (64.125.23.53) 10.252 ms
8 po10.mpr1.cdg2.fr.above.net (64.125.23.41) 8.420 ms po20.mpr1.cdg2.fr.above.net (64.125.23.45) 4.883 ms po10.mpr1.cdg2.fr.above.net (64.125.23.41) 5.239 ms
9 21st-century-communication-france.sfinx.tm.fr (194.68.129.168) 7.263 ms 5.558 ms 5.942 ms
10 po9-0.par-gar-core-1.interoute.net (212.23.42.33) 13.282 ms 12.700 ms 22.639 ms
11 po1-0.lon-wal-core-2.interoute.net (84.233.152.165) 12.715 ms 13.433 ms 12.330 ms
12 te4-1.lon-wal-access-3.interoute.net (217.118.119.34) 12.903 ms 12.959 ms 12.575 ms
13 212.23.58.125 (212.23.58.125) 13.729 ms 13.887 ms 16.362 ms

Traceroute to Akamai

traceroute to a23.g.akamai.net (80.15.236.200), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 1.173 ms 1.691 ms 0.487 ms
2 reverse.completel.net (195.167.205.137) 1.157 ms 1.149 ms 2.178 ms
3 reverse.completel.net (212.99.13.129) 4.793 ms 3.885 ms 8.489 ms
4 213.30.129.73 (213.30.129.73) 4.801 ms 4.877 ms 6.233 ms
5 reverse.completel.net (213.244.0.238) 103.387 ms 213.624 ms 208.285 ms
6 completel.gw.te-9-1.er1.rb.par.neotelecoms.com (83.167.40.249) 40.253 ms 5.253 ms 5.197 ms
7 ge5-2.mpr2.cdg2.fr.above.net (64.125.23.86) 4.844 ms 4.683 ms 29.870 ms
8 81.52.170.1 (81.52.170.1) 21.227 ms 13.634 ms 7.768 ms
9 80.15.236.200 (80.15.236.200) 13.678 ms 7.540 ms 5.020 ms

Hiya,

there does seem to be a bit of a difference between the two, what is the URL to the test on Akamai and I will do a test from here (I'm working from home today on a none Interoute ADSL connection).

It looks quite like completels network slows quite a bit when you get to the edge of it, it would be interesting to see these tests from other users eleswhere on the net.

Does anyone else want to do a test from their line to see any more differences.

Cheers

Will

Akamai Test URL:

http://a23.g.akamai.net/7/23/2740/0002/download.macromedia.com/pub/dreamweaver/esd/Dreamweaver4TBYB.exe

From a Hetzner server:

backup:~# wget http://a23.g.akamai.net/7/23/2740/0002/download.macromedia.com/pub/dreamweaver/esd/Dreamweaver4TBYB.exe
--16:43:40-- http://a23.g.akamai.net/7/23/2740/0002/download.macromedia.com/pub/dreamweaver/esd/Dreamweaver4TBYB.exe
=> `Dreamweaver4TBYB.exe'
Resolving a23.g.akamai.net... 84.53.182.88, 84.53.182.99
Connecting to a23.g.akamai.net|84.53.182.88|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 25,363,980 (24M) [application/octet-stream]

100%[====================================>] 25,363,980 4.05M/s ETA 00:00

16:43:47 (3.78 MB/s) - `Dreamweaver4TBYB.exe' saved [25363980/25363980]

===========

backup:~# wget del.interoute.com/?id=3fd6198c-4d37-49b8-8e9a-9dbe49f664ae&delivery=download
[1] 19298
backup:~# --16:45:06-- http://del.interoute.com/?id=3fd6198c-4d37-49b8-8e9a-9dbe49f664ae
=> `index.html?id=3fd6198c-4d37-49b8-8e9a-9dbe49f664ae'
Resolving del.interoute.com... 212.23.58.125
Connecting to del.interoute.com|212.23.58.125|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: http://dnl.interoute.com/{340c15b3-cd8a-495e-bf1f-d06afaf75cd2}/{35abe3f0-d7c7-49fc-9621-9080a487a1e9}/10MB.txt?ext=.txt [following]
--16:45:06-- http://dnl.interoute.com/%7B340c15b3-cd8a-495e-bf1f-d06afaf75cd2%7D/%7B35abe3f0-d7c7-49fc-9621-9080a487a1e9%7D/10MB.txt?ext=.txt
=> `10MB.txt?ext=.txt'
Resolving dnl.interoute.com... 212.23.58.125
Reusing existing connection to del.interoute.com:80.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 10,485,760 (10M) [application/x-download]

100%[====================================>] 10,485,760 1.79M/s ETA 00:00

16:45:12 (1.77 MB/s) - `10MB.txt?ext=.txt' saved [10485760/10485760]

Hello Will,

Let me ask you something: Interoute offers "Interoute Express" and "Interoute Extra".

The first one is just a file hoster. The second one you sell as CDN.

Are those URLs that you uploaded on Interoute Express or Interoute Extra service?

Is there may be a chance, that you misunderstood something within your own products and there is indeed another way to upload the files, so that those are really in different locations saved on high speed caching servers? And not just one location in UK?

P.S. If not, then sorry, but the URLs you gave us are a joke for those outside UK.

There is another problem. I thought willm was a CDN customer. A provider can't offer their own services here.

You may not publish or discuss any information regarding your product or services, or future (possible) products or services, or any product or services you are, or have been, associated with. This includes, but not limited to suggesting your own services, or services of partners, clients, employers or friends. The Advertising Forums are for advertising.

This is in the advertising forums, dotHostel.

Hi Happyuser,

both services Interoute Express and Media Manager (the CDN) actually run on the same back end delivery platform. I've just tried several more tests and am getting exactly the same speeds from Akamai and ourselves (around 1MB per second on my home DSL link). It would probably help if you could put up a larger test file as yours completes a little too quick!

It would be interesting to see if by putting some of your data onto the CDN whether your users would actually notice a difference (and probably more importantly that would the price difference be worth the difference?). nb:/ EMI and lots of other huge global companies use our CDN for delivering their data, for instance the latest Kylie video which was pre-released onto the net was hosted by us and took multi million download hits within a few hours.

As I said before if you require a test account please do email me, otherwise good luck in your hunt.

Best Regards

Will

Hi Will,

you do not understand. You are in UK, of course is the Interoute service fast for you :-) Sorry... but isn't logical?

But for everybody else in the world (except in UK) the your hosting is significantly slowlier.

We have over 1,5 million unique visitors per month. Believe me, I will for sure not put something online - and then wait for the feedback of my customers :-D

And we testen your URL from 9 different locations (from Germany, France and Russia). And if you have a 10 Mbit/s line at home to test, then it should take you at least 30 seconds to download the Akamai test file. I do not understand, why do you need a larger file to see if the speed is 380 Kbyte/s or 280 Kbyte/s?

Your CDN is nothing else but a server cluster - Amazon S3 type. And has nothing to do with a geographical CDN service. A real CDN has caching servers distributed everywhere in the world. Even if it is only within the same network (e.g. Interoute). A data from UK to China needs more time and is less fast than a data from UK to UK. Don't you think so? :-)

Sorry, but I really appreciate your efforts. But you either do not want to understand that a CDN has to have geographically distributed caching servers - or you are more sales than technology person.

We need 95% speed - from all parts of the world. And we need a price than is realistic. I do not perceive a price premium of 800% as at Akamai as realistic. But as long as the quality is not nearly what we need - we do not take it even for free.

What solution are you using to deliver content?

Happyuser,

Are your customers mostly global, or are they based in Europe and North America? If they are global (China, Pacific, West Coast US for example) and you are doing large’ish 20+MB downloads than yes a distributed system may suit your needs more correctly.

If your customers are downloading small files 20MB and less then the differences you are talking about are a matter of seconds, and one in which I very much doubt would be an issue for you.

One of our customers is EMI and last week we hosted the latest Kylie video as part of a marketing viral, this was a truly global and within one day took over 2.5million hits and full downloads. We do this and larger things on a daily basis for large global customers.

The request for a larger test file was so that performance can be checked on a download that lasts a little more than a few seconds, a 10 second burst download can hardly be classed as indicative of sustained speed of a large download.

Yes our CDN is a cluster, based both in London and Amsterdam – I made this clear on my first post.

No a CDN does not need to have geographically distributed caching servers, ours has not from day one and it is used aggressively with more traffic each day being put through it, from very large tier one customers.

As I said if you require a test platform so that your customers can give you feedback please email me, however if not then I wish you your best as I feel this thread is not getting you any closer to your end needs.

Best regards

Will

@willm

At this thread you may find more information regarding what happyuser is looking for:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=668903

Please excuse my post stating providers' offer were prohibit. I did not realise this was another thread. Sorry.

Hi dotHostel, thanks for the link and no worries about the previous post, I wasn’t even sure if I was allowed to post here!

Looking through the previous thread I can see the issue; basically, happyuser would like the Akamai services without the Akamai cost..

Akamai does have a great system and it does work very well to give a blanket high performance solution to users irrespective of their location, however the issue is that to achieve this there are thousands of servers located in thousands of co-lo sites – and not surprisingly this costs a lot to maintain, hence the high cost.

Looking at the other options put forward I personally don’t believe a home grown solution of a couple of servers would actually take the load. If we take the numbers given of 1.5M downloads per month, split into 31 days (48,000 downloads per day), 6 hour timeframe of users online (8,000 users per hour), that leaves us with around 134 downloads per minute. If the download is a software update or similar then I’m guessing this window would be significantly smaller as this would be done as soon as people come online rather than spread over a time – therefore the peak load can be massive. A server (or even a fairly good cluster) would have issues dealing with this.
[Please forgive my rough calculations but I hope you can see where I’m coming from]

So I would say that the issue is not one of immediate download speed on a single test file, as this will change per the location (as we have seen in the tests), but I think the focus should also be on which services can actually cope with sustained speed to a large number of users.

This is where we (Interoute) come in, we have a massive delivery platform which handles sustained peaks to huge numbers of people sat in the middle of our network (interoute.com/networks/index/ - please note its all our own fibre and is one of the largest in Europe). Yes our CDN may be a little slower than a server or service sat in the same city, but it can and does deliver the performance needed to supply large numbers of people at the same time.

Happyuser has a simple choice I believe; either pay the Akamai costs, or pay significantly less to another large provider with a much lower cost scaled solution.