Updated: Akamai Will Announce New P2P Offering On Nov. 6th

After my earlier post this morning asking if Akamai will announce their P2P offering next week, numerous Akamai customers wrote in to say that they have been invited to a special Akamai event on Nov. 6th for the launch of Akamai's new P2P service offering. Customers who have been briefed on the P2P service already have said it will launch in November and be restricted to HTTP download only to start.

Biggest question I have is what the cost difference will be between Akamai's traditional CDN service and the new P2P offering? Tomorrow, I am going to post what the current going rate is for P2P delivery.

Comments

[John Dillon]

At last Akamai has realised that there is only one solution to deliver large digital assets & video over the internet, and that is to embrace P2P technologies.

Our message to Akamai is "Welcome to the party, what took you so long?"

The benefits of a Hybrid-P2P network are well documented for large file delivery, radically improved economics, and improved performance. As world leaders in this field thats what we have been doing for four years. Trouble is this technology needs to have been built into the core on day one, not retrofitted later - thats like putting lipstick on a pig! And represents a niave approach that seems to be a knee jerk reaction to the erosion of Akamai margins and the desperate need to find some new growth sectors.