Microsoft Word - Document1
Assignment 4: Security, Technology, and Payments
BU460 – Electronic Commerce
Directions: Answer in complete sentences and be sure to use co
ect English
spelling and grammar. Sources must be cited in APA format. Your response
should be four (4) pages in length; Margins 1” all sides, Headings Bold, Type
Style and Size Times New Roman, 12-point, Software - MS Word
Read the case Akamai Technologies: Attempting to Keep Supply Ahead of Demand on pp.
XXXXXXXXXXof your text.
Respond to the following.
Part A: Discuss the evolution and future of e-commerce.
Part B: Why does Akamai need to geographically disperse its servers to deliver its
customers’ web content?
Part C: If you wanted to deliver software content over the Internet, would you sign up for
Akamai’s service? Why or why not?
Part D: Do you think Internet users should be charged based on the amount of bandwidth
they consume, or a tiered plan where users would pay in rough proportion to their usage?
Akamai Technologies - Attempting to Keep Supply Ahead of Demand.pdf
C H A P T E R 3
Akamai Technologies: Attempting to Keep Supply Ahead of Demand
In 2017, the amount of Internet traffic generated by YouTube alone is greater than the amount of traffic
on the entire Internet in 2000. Because of video streaming and the explosion in mobile devices
demanding high-bandwidth applications, Internet traffic has increased over 500% since 2010 and is
predicted to nearly triple by 2021 (see Figure XXXXXXXXXXInternet video is now a majority of Internet traffic
and will reach 82% by 2021, according to Cisco. Mobile platform traffic is expected to grow sevenfold
from its 2016 levels by 2021. Cisco estimates that annual global Internet traffic will be around 3.3
zettabytes in 2021: that’s 3,300 exabytes, or, in other words, 33 with 19 zeroes behind it!
FIGURE 3.18 THE GROWTH OF INTERNET TRAFFIC
Case Study In today’s
oadband environment, the threshold of patience is very low. Increased video
and audio customer expectations are bad news for anyone seeking to use the Web for delivery of high-
quality multimedia content and high-definition video. Akamai is one of the Web’s major helpers, and an
overwhelming majority of the Web’s top companies use Akamai’s services to speed the delivery of
content. Akamai serves more than 30 terabits of web traffic per second.
Slow-loading web pages and content sometimes result from poor design, but more often than not, the
problem stems from the underlying infrastructure of the Internet. The Inter-net is a collection of
networks that has to pass information from one network to another. Sometimes the handoff is not
smooth. Every 1,500-byte packet of information sent over the Internet must be verified by the receiving
server and an acknowledgment sent to the sender. This slows down not only the distribution of content
such as music, but also slows down interactive requests, such as purchases, that require the client
computer to interact with an online shopping cart. Moreover, each packet may go through many
different servers on its way to its final destination, multiplying by several orders of magnitude the
number of acknowledgments required to move a packet from New York to San Francisco. The Internet
today spends much of its time and capacity verifying packets, contributing to a problem called “latency”
or delay. For this reason, a single e-mail with a 1-megabyte attached PDF file can create more than 50
megabytes of Internet traffic and data storage on servers, client hard drives, and network backup drives.
Web page load times for desktops have also increased significantly as pages become laden with more
content of various types. Load times increased by over 60% from 2013 to 2015 and have continued to
ise since that time, further complicating content distribution.
Akamai Technologies was founded by Tom Leighton, an MIT professor of applied mathematics, and
Daniel Lewin, an MIT grad student, with the idea of expediting Internet traffic to overcome these
limitations. Lewin’s master’s thesis was the theoretical starting point for the company. It described
storing copies of web content such as pictures or video clips at many different locations around the
Internet so that one could always retrieve a nea
y copy, making web pages load faster.
Officially launched in August 1998, Akamai’s cu
ent products are based on the Akamai Intelligent
Platform, a cloud platform made up of over 233,000 servers in 130 countries within over 1,500 networks
around the world, and all within a single network hop of 85% of all Internet users. Akamai software on
these servers allows the platform to identify and block security threats and provide comprehensive
knowledge of network conditions, as well as instant device-level detection and optimization. Akamai’s
site performance products allow customers to move their online content closer to end users so a user in
New York City, for instance, will be served L.L.Bean pages from the New York Metro area Akamai
servers, while users of the L.L.Bean site in San Francisco will be served pages from Akamai servers in San
Francisco. Akamai has a wide range of large corporate and government clients: 1 out of every 3 global
Fortune 500 companies, the top 30 media and entertainment companies, 96 of the top 100 online U.S.
etailers, all
anches of the U.S. military, all the major U.S. sports leagues, and so on. In 2017, Akamai
delivers between 15% and 30% of all web traffic, and over 3 trillion daily Internet interactions. Other
competitors in the content delivery network (CDN) industry include Limelight Networks, Level 3
Communications, and Mi
or Image Internet.
Accomplishing this daunting task requires that Akamai monitor the entire Internet,locating potential
sluggish areas and devising faster routes for information to travel. Frequently used portions of a client’s
website, or large video or audio files that would be difficult to send to users quickly, are stored on
Akamai’s servers. When a user requests a song or a video file, his or her request is redirected to an
Akamai server nea
y and the content is served from this local server. Akamai’s servers are placed in
Tier 1 backbone supplier networks, large ISPs, universities, and other networks. Akamai’s software
deter-mines which server is optimal for the user and then transmits the content locally. Web sites that
are “Akamaized” can be delivered anywhere from 4 to 10 times as fast as non-Akamaized content.
Akamai has developed a number of other business services based on its Internet savvy, including
targeted advertising based on user location and zip code, content security, business intelligence,
disaster recovery, on-demand bandwidth and computing capacity during spikes in Internet traffic,
storage, global traffic management, and streaming services. You can see several interesting
visualizations of the Internet that log basic real-time online activity by visiting the Akamai website.
The shift toward cloud computing and the mobile platform as well as the growing
SOURCES: “Facts & Figures,” Akamai.com, accessed August 7, 2017; “Discontent and Disruption in the
World of Content Delivery Networks,” by Mahendra Ramsing-hani, Techcrunch.com, June 1, 2017;
Michael Kerner, “Akamai CSO Detailers Cyber-Security Challenges and Improvements,” Eweek.com, May
15, 2017; “Why Akamai Lost More Than $1.5B in Market Value After Earnings Report—Again,” by Kelly J.
O’Brien, Bizjournals.com, May 3, 2017; “Akamai Shares Dip After Deal to Buy a Digital Analytics
Company,” by Luqman Adeniyi,Cnbc.com, March 30, 2017; “Akamai Buys Software Startup Soasta,” by
Natalie Gagliordi,Zdnet.com, March 29, 2017; “Akamai Security Business Shines, Offsets Apple,
Facebook Shift,” by popularity of streaming video have provided Akamai with new growth opportunities.
As more businesses and business models are moving to the Web, Akamai has seen its client base
continue to grow beyond the most powerful Internet retailers and online content providers. In 2014,
Akamai made a push to encourage Hollywood studios to use the cloud for feature films, touting its
ability to handle uploads and downloads of large video files, to quickly convert files from one format to
another, and to apply DRM protections. Establishing partnerships with movie studios represented big
usiness for Akamai, with an increasing amount of media consumption taking place on mobile devices
through the cloud. Akamai has also made agreements to become the primary content delivery platform
for cloud service providers like Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
However, the growth of streaming video has also created new challenges for Akamai, including
increased competition from Comcast and Amazon, which have built competing content delivery
services. Amazon’s CloudFront content delivery network is already
inging in $2.3 billion in revenues.
Many of Akamai’s largest clients, including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix, are also
increasingly shifting their content delivery operations away from Akamai’s platforms and onto in-house
content delivery networks, putting downward pressure on the company’s revenues and stock price,
which dropped in response to lower first quarter earnings in 2017. Amazon in particular continues to
make inroads against Akamai—while Akamai still serves more top 100 domains, Amazon CloudFront
serves the majority of the top million domains, suggesting that Amazon is steadily building its client base
with mid-sized companies. Other competitors in content delivery, such as Cloudflare, Fastly, and
StackPath also represent threats to Akamai’s continued dominance.
Akamai is also acutely aware of the increase in cybercrime as more traffic migrates to the Internet.
Growth in Internet traffic is good news for Akamai, but the company must also now deal with politically
motivated cyberattacks, organized crime online, and state-sponsored cyberwarfare, not just against its
clients, but against CDNs like Akamai itself. Akamai has continued to improve its Kona Site Defender
tool, which offers a variety of security measures for Akamai clients. The tool protects against Distributed
Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and includes a firewall for web applications. In 2016, Akamai rolled out
new improvements to Kona’s web application firewall and analytics features. Akamai also upgraded Site
Defender’s Web Application Firewall feature and developed modifications to the tool that make it easier
for its users to use. With DDoS attacks against CDNs on the rise, Akamai has also taken precautions to
ensure that it can