Use of <akadns>

Derek J. Balling dredd at megacity.org
Mon Jan 29 18:12:34 UTC 2001


At 10:29 AM -0700 1/29/01, Edsonet wrote:
>When Microsoft ran into it's problems last week, they started using a CNAME
>for <www.microsoft.com> called <www.microsoft.akadns.net>. Things are back
>to normal this week, but I noticed today that Yahoo is doing the same
>thing. Requests for <login.yahoo.com> return <login.yahoo.akadns.net> and a
>list of the root servers. I doubt that we will ever learn the real truth
>about what happened to Microsoft, but it would be nice to have an insight
>into why these 2 giants are doing this.

It's not quantum physics. :)

akadns.net allows providers to use Akamai's "cool DNS tricks"(pat.pend.) to
find the nearest/best server to serve that content to you.

Essentially, in the example above, "www.microsoft.akadns.net" might contain
all of Microsoft's www.microsoft.com servers, but since its at Akamai,
Akamai will do its black-magic to figure out WHICH Microsoft server is
"closest" to the requestor and give them the servers which will yield the
best response.

But if Microsoft can't give a CNAME record to akadns.net, its all for naught.

D
-- 
+---------------------+-----------------------------------------+
| dredd at megacity.org  | "Conan! What is best in life?"          |
|  Derek J. Balling   | "To crush your enemies, see them        |
|                     |    driven before you, and to hear the   |
|                     |    lamentation of their women!"         |
+---------------------+-----------------------------------------+


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