AKAMAI SERVICE

Akamai Global Traffic Management

Maximize revenues and improve security by ensuring customer

facing web pages have optimal responsiveness and protection.
Maintaining a global Web presence is becoming an increasingly complex challenge. In addition to BENEFITS TO YOUR BUSINESS
the obvious goals of minimizing downtime and optimizing response times in the face of site traffic
and Internet conditions as a whole, administrators must also take measures to address a variety of • Improved Availability — Looks at traffic
security threats and prevent them from impacting site performance. Akamai can help do just that, management with an Internet centric view to
while enabling you to grow customer loyalty and maximize revenues. ensure users can reach your Web site, as opposed
to simply evaluating if servers are functional.
Achieving high availability and optimal response times on a global basis often involves a variety • Improved Response Time — Real-time Internet
of implementation strategies including, but not limited to, geographically diverse datacenters and conditions, such as latency and packet loss, are
redundant architectures and components. If possible, Web site availability and server utilization used to determine an optimal path, as opposed
should be continuously monitored at the datacenter level, along with the end user’s ability to actually to less meaningful measures such as number
reach the datacenter from the Internet. Traditional hardware load balancing appliances do not factor of hops or a weighted round robin traffic
in Internet bottlenecks such as congestion, inefficient BGP routing decisions, or peering issues – all distribution. By factoring real-time Internet
of which can affect an end user’s ability to be connected to an appropriate datacenter. conditions into policy decisions, Akamai can
mitigate the impact of Internet congestion.
Akamai’s Global Traffic Management service applies an Internet-centric approach to global server load • Greater Security — Global Traffic Management
balancing to ensure high availability and responsiveness to user requests. Unlike traditional hardware- is just one facet of Akamai’s Security Solutions.
based solutions that reside within the datacenter, Akamai’s Global Traffic Management service is a fault By moving traffic management functionality out
tolerant system that makes intelligent routing decisions based on real-time server, Internet and security of your data center and onto Akamai’s global
threat conditions to ensure user requests can reach the datacenter. EdgePlatform, you can effectively insulate your
infrastructure from threats while relying on
Customers can select from five service variants of Global Traffic Management: Akamai’s state of the art security services to
deliver high service availability and survivability.
• Failover — directs requests to an alternate location when there is a failure at a primary site. • Lower Cost of Ownership — Managed service
The Failover solution can be used across disparate network carriers. approach enables global growth without requiring
• IPIntelligence — directs requests to a closest datacenter based on geographic or IP rules. increased IT infrastructure OPEX and CAPEX
• Weighted Load Balancing — directs requests to live data centers in exactly the proportion configured. associated with hardware-based approaches.
• Performance — requests are directed as determined through multivariate policy rules featuring • Network Visibility and Control — Allows
percentage-based load balancing and load feedback to allow for server-specific load balancing administrators to dynamically modify traffic
within a datacenter. allocation and set-up new properties. Visibility
• Performance Plus — enhances the Performance version by deploying Akamai network agents at into real-time data, summary reports, and alerts
each point of origin to enable a datacenter-to-Internet viewpoint allowing for more precise decisions provide administrators the means to identify
when directing end user requests. and address potential problems.
• Proven Solution — Leverage the same

How Akamai’s Global Traffic Management Works technology powering Akamai’s global distribution
network and the world’s busiest Web properties.
GTM monitors site availability, load, and Internet traffic conditions and applies site-specific policy rules
to determine the best customer data center to serve and end user request.

The Global Traffic Management service integrates with a customer’s Web infrastructure using the Domain
Name Service (DNS). End users rely on DNS to determine the location of a site on the Internet. To use
GTM, a site administrator performs a one-time change: the DNS information for a site is altered to return

Continued
 Akamai Global Traffic Management AKAMAI SERVICE

How Akamai’s Global Traffic Management Works (continued)

a CNAME, having the effect of directing requests to specialized Akamai DNS
servers running the GTM optimization algorithms. GTM returns the best
customer datacenter to serve the request. From an end user’s perspective,
the Global Traffic Management service works as follows:
1. A user makes a request for a Web site. The user’s browser issues a request
to its local name server for the IP address associated with the Web site.
2. Using the standard DNS resolution process, the local name server sends
a request to the Web site’s authoritative name server for the IP address
associated with the Web site.
3. The authoritative name server replies with a CNAME, an alias to the Akamai
name servers. A CNAME is used so the Akamai servers are responsible for
responding to the local name server.
4. Using the standard DNS resolution process again, the local name server sends
a request to the Akamai name servers to determine which datacenter to route
the user to, based on the customer’s policy rules.
5. The Akamai name servers reply with the list of IP addresses of Web servers
at an optimal site.
6. The local name server sends one of the IP addresses to the user’s browser.
7. The user is then connected transparently to the requested Web site.

Authoritative
Name Server

Data Center 2
Akamai Name Servers

End User Local Name Server

Data Center 1

Figure 1: How GTM Works

Global Traffic Management can be combined easily with other Akamai
services to provide powerful and highly available Web delivery solutions.
For example, when combined with Akamai’s Dynamic Site Accelerator service,
user requests are directed to an optimal Akamai edge server that uses Global
Traffic Management policy rules to select the specific origin server from which
to accelerate the delivery of dynamic content across the Akamai network.
Global Traffic Management is a trusted and proven solution used by many of
the world’s most heavily-trafficked Web sites. Simply knowing datacenter servers
are functional is not enough when running a mission critical application. Akamai
ensures that Internet users can actually get to the Web site. Customers can be
assured that Akamai will always direct traffic to a live customer server.

The Akamai Difference

Akamai® provides market-leading managed services for powering rich media, dynamic transactions, and enterprise applications online. Having pioneered the content delivery market
one decade ago, Akamai’s services have been adopted by the world’s most recognized brands across diverse industries. The alternative to centralized Web infrastructure, Akamai’s
global network of tens of thousands of distributed servers provides the scale, reliability, insight and performance for businesses to succeed online. Akamai has transformed the
Internet into a more viable place to inform, entertain, interact, and collaborate. To experience The Akamai Difference, visit www.akamai.com.

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