MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

Apple goes to dual-vendor strategy for content delivery; now using Limelight along with Akamai

Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - 10:56 AM EDT

"For many years, Apple has relied on Akamai to deliver the vast majority, if not all, of Apple's content. But in the fourth quarter of 2008, it appears that Apple moved to a dual-vendor strategy and started using Limelight Networks in addition to Akamai for the delivery of OSX software updates, iPhone updates and app delivery from Apple.com and the iPhone store," Dan Rayburn reports via the BusinessOfVideo blog.

"Starting in the fourth quarter of 08, content that I historically saw being delivered from Akamai, also started coming from Limelight Networks. Now I don't know if this content was "exclusive" to Akamai or if 100% of it historically came from Akamai, but as an example, in Q2 of 08, my OSX updates always came from Akamai domains. Last Friday, Apple released an update to QuickTime, version 7.6, and the update came from the Limelight network out of a Seattle POP," Rayburn reports.

"I started noticing all of these changes around the November time frame and didn't see a single piece of content being delivered for Apple, by Limelight, anytime before that. That's not to say it could not of been happening earlier, but I am one of those Apple freaks who downloads tons of stuff, always looking at where it comes from and have never seen the llnw.net domain show up anywhere before November," Rayburn reports.

"I don't know Apple's traffic volume, but considering how many iPods and iPhones they keep selling, you have to imagine their traffic has some crazy growth each quarter and moving to a dual-vendor strategy should help keep Apple's services from having future performance issues. We already know that no CDN has unlimited capacity and can only handle so much traffic at any given time and if you are Apple, using more than one CDN is just smart business," Rayburn reports.

Much more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Manny" for the heads up.]