But once we launched, our traffic just went up and up and up. Akamai's FreeFlow has it running 10 times faster than when it launched, Maccubbin says. Content-delivery network providers create shortcuts between the source of the information and the person requesting it. Under typical circumstances, a request from a user in New York for information that resides on a server in San Jose fights its way across the country, making multiple hops through the congested Internet. That naturally takes time and slows performance.
Specifics vary from provider to provider, but the result is essentially the same.
For instance, Cisco's hardware-based approach the, Content Delivery Network system, will distribute content out to edge nodes and redirect requests to a local node. Exodus, in Santa Clara, supplies the infrastructure, which is its core business. Cost, of course, is also a factor. People commit to a certain bandwidth per month, and we charge them a monthly recurring fee. That's pretty much industry standard.