Akamai - CDN Planet

Company

Akamai is one of the oldest CDNs and generally considered to be the largest global CDN. They have 'servers everywhere' and a wide range of products and services. The company is actively involved in Let's Encrypt and is pushing HTTP/2 adoption.
website

Products

View the table below for more insight into Akamai products.
Hover over/touch the product to view a short description.

= Yes
= Sort of/partially
= No
= Unknown

Product
Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ...	Dynamic Site Accelerator
Small file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of small files (file size <1 MB)	Ion
Large file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of large files (file size >1 MB)	Download Delivery
Live videoDelivery of live video. RTMP? Transcoding/transmuxing?	Adaptive Media Delivery
Video on demandDelivery of on demand video
Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization	Image & Video Manager
DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain	Edge DNS
WAFWeb Application Firewall	Web Application Protector
Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this.	Kona DDoS Defender
Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs
Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers	EdgeWorkers

Network

Akamai does not publish specifics on how large their CDN network is and where the POPs are, other than 'A quarter of a million edge servers, deployed in thousands of locations around the world' as per the Intelligent Platform page on the Akamai website.

Pricing

Akamai typically requires annual contracts with pricing depending on traffic volume and what features/services you need. Get in touch to learn more about their services and prices.
Akamai locations and sales contact info

Pricing & contract duration
Minimum contract term	12 months
Minimum monthly costs	Unknown
Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests	Unknown
Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred	Unknown
NA/EU traffic (low volume)	Unknown
APAC traffic (low volume)	Unknown
LATAM traffic (low volume)	Unknown

Features

View the tables below for more insight into the features Akamai supports.
Hover over/touch the feature name to view a short description.

= Yes
= Sort of/partially
= No
= Extra costs
= Unknown

Web acceleration
Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing.	Can't sign up and get started. Must talk to sales.
Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs?
Apex/root domain OK No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com	If you also use their Fast DNS for your domain
HTTP/2
IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6?
Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery	Resend from origin, or compress on edge
Origin pull - protocolHTTP only or HTTPS possible too?	HTTP and HTTPS
Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value?
Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP
Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin
Cache control - CDN caching
Cache control - client caching
Serve Stale CDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble
Purge Invalidate or delete cached objects on CDN
Purge - capabilities
Analytics
Log files
API

HTTPS & Content Protection
CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net
Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate
Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN
Token authentication
Geo blocking
Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content
Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content
IP white/blacklisting

Support

Customer support
Documentation	Yes, but not public
Humans

Contact Akamai

Get in touch with Akamai

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