CogBlog

If you deliver video online you are probably familiar with how dramatically it can chew through your available hosting bandwidth. Video files are quite large compared to your typical html/image files, so all it takes is a little popularity and your video watching visitors can ruin your server performance. Building an infrastructure capable of handling your peak times with a margin of safety, leaving a little room to grow, and not breaking the bank can be a challenge.

For this reason, services like Akamai were born. Akamai has created a network of servers spread around the globe that is highly capable of managing large volumes of high bandwidth content like video (or music). Companies like Apple have been using Akamai to deliver the image and video content of their site for a number of years now. Apple also uses Akamai to speed delivery of downloads from iTunes.

I've been following Akamai for some time now. It was once a high flyer of the dot-com era. Everyone believed that a global network of servers would be required to overcome the problems that great distance introduced with online performance. At one point, its share price was over $200, and then fell dramatically. In the September 11th tragedy, one of the company's co-founders was killed on a the plane flown into the World Trade Center. The company was saddled with a big, now much devalued property, and had a very large amount of debt. Things looked pretty bleak. They traded at less than $1 per share and faced delisting, but their product was still very good.

Since then the web has grown up a bit. And, demand for higher-bandwidth content has exploded. Akamai worked through many of their troubles, and are doing quite well now.

All of this is a long winded way to tell you about an interesting way that small-time publishers, or individuals can actually use the Akamai network for free. A new company called VideoEgg is launching which will host your video on Akamai. They pay the bandwidth charges, but will deliver short ads before your video plays to cover the cost. It is an interesting idea, they have a nice little website, and it may open up a high-end service like Akamai to a whole new audience.

http://www.VideoEgg.com