[Infowarrior] - The Akamai Story: From Theory to Practice

[Richard Forno]

Video: The Akamai Story: From Theory to Practice

F. Thomson Leighton Ph.D. '81
April 21, 2004
Running Time: 55:36

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/199/

About the Lecture

If you have ever wondered what it means for a website to become  
“Akamaized,” this lecture about the company’s origins explains much of  
the mystery. But before there was an Akamai, there were research  
problems—lots of them. Nearly 15 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee, architect  
of the World Wide Web, asked Tom Leighton to think about solutions to  
future -- and now familiar-- Internet issues: bottlenecks that form  
when users flood to a particular site, often along a single Internet  
supply line. Leighton’s team generated algorithms (and publications  
and advanced degrees) while figuring out the fastest means to move  
information from here to there. Along the way, they learned some  
tricks to outsmart Internet service providers who slow traffic down by  
bumping competitors’ data from their network lines. Akamai (which  
means clever and cool in Hawaiian) got its start in the MIT 50k  
competition, and took off when some big name clients decided to give  
the company a trial run. Paramount, ESPN, Apple, and Microsoft  
recognized the importance of Akamai’s Internet optimization strategy:  
distributing servers and routing software to the “edge” or end users,  
rather than centralizing services. Akamai survived the stock market  
“bubble” and collapse, and now serves a diverse global market.