load, network latency, geographic
and network proximity, and customer business rules.
7.5.4 Storage Akamai‘s platform includes a high-availability storage system. This system can be used as an origin server for many types of content, such as static objects, large media libraries, and backup sites. EdgeComputing applications can also use the storage system as a repository for some types of data. The storage architecture is designed to have no single point of failure servers are deployed in clusters in
multiple geographic locations, with both in-cluster and multi-cluster replication automatically provided. Multiple mechanisms are provided for uploading to the system, ranging from rsync-over-ssh to HTTPS POST.
7.5.5 Client Side Delivery As an additional approach to improving end user performance and reducing customer cost, Akamai provides a client side delivery system [3] that can be used by customers. This includes client- side software (to be installed on end user machines) which securely communicates with distributed Akamai systems. Client- side web applications (running within the browser) can communicate locally with this client software to request content, such as for the distribution of large software packages. The client side delivery system behaves much
like many peer-to-peer systems, but provides additional features required by enterprise customers. In particular, most enterprise customers care strongly about guaranteed performance and availability of their content, and they do not want to lose control or visibility over their content delivery. The client side delivery system achieves these goals it leverages the rest of the Akamai platform to seed content, and is able to fallback to requesting content from the nearest Akamai servers when peers are not providing adequate performance. By integrating tightly with the Akamai edge server platform, client software is able to provide customers with control over and visibility into the
distribution of their content, as well as guarantees about the integrity of the delivered content. As the client software communicates with an Akamai control-plane, decisions about which peers to communicate with can be made based in the Akamai mapping systems real-time understanding of Internet topology.
7.5.6 Management Portal Akamai‘s web-based management portal provides customers with a high-availability configuration and management platform allowing them to maintain control over and visibility into their content, applications, and traffic. Customers can view information
such as traffic reports, network performance and packet loss, end user demographics, download completion rates, media playtime buffer time, and custom-defined reports. Other portal capabilities
include self-provisioning, configuration (such as managing site metadata configurations or invalidating content, diagnostics, management, alerts, and reporting. The portal system is accelerated using Akamai‘s application delivery network, improving its performance and reliability for customers around the world.
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