[Linux-aus] bigpond now uses proxy servers to spy on 'us'

[Rohan M.]

Hi Senectus and James,

I think I have to kindly disagree.

If this is just a simple mirror/cache system why would they use such a
complex multi-tiered clustered system? Surely it would be easier and more
cost effective to just add some records to Bigpond DNS servers and run
regular mirror web servers like everyone else in the world does.

Why would they make this system so complex, so that cnn.com still resolves
to its american IP address but I never hit it, so their systems are
caching based on IP address not domain names? Isn't that more complex than
a simple DNS system pointing to a local bigpond IP? How does their system
handle virtual servers where many domain names point to one address
without looking at http headers as well as destination IP to deciede what
to route?

And most importantly - why would they have seperate nodes behind each
gateway? Why such a spaced out system that is so local to the end user and
not bigponds backbone or server farm?

Why does ALL of my traffic, every protocol, have to route through these
akamai servers?

I'm sorry but this stinks of malicous intent.

Allow me to quote from akamai's site:

http://www.akamai.com/en/html/services/web_analytics.html

<start quote>

WebTrends On Demand

Business managers today need to gain control over their Web site through
relevant, timely information from a Web Analytics solution powerful and
flexible enough to answer any Web site question. Akamai has partnered with
WebTrends, the leader in WebAnalytics, to deliver WebTrends On-Demand -
the only complete web analytics solution that provides end-to-end results
to every department, for every web initiative within your organization.

WebTrends On-Demand features the most comprehensive analysis, greatest
customization and most intuitive visualization capabilities, with a highly
scalable and flexible architecture designed to exceed the demands of the
largest Internet, intranet and extranet sites. Whether you want to improve
campaign performance, create a custom merchandising report or evaluate
conversion and abandonment, WebTrends On-Demand gives you the flexibility
to prove and surpass ROI targets for all your web initiatives.

With WebTrends On-Demand you can:

    * Create custom reports to answer your most specific and difficult
business questions.
    * Get your critical web metrics updated throughout the day with the
Express Results Viewer to support tactical decision making.
    * Incorporate web analytics into your everyday workflow, and meld it
with other important data through tight integration with Microsoft
Excel.
    * Discover your most valuable customer segments, analyze their
interests and preferences, and optimize retention campaigns and
product offers with simple or sophisticated segmentation rules.

<end quote>

A few keywords that jump out at me in that would be:
"comprehensive analysis"
"greatest customization"
"evaluate conversion and abandonment"
"answer your most specific and difficult business questions"

and the worst line would be:

"Discover your most valuable customer segments, analyze their interests
and preferences, and optimize retention campaigns and product offers with
simple or sophisticated segmentation rules"

Are you sure you still want to stick to this being a harmless caching
system that is there to only benifit me performance wise?

And what about all the sites that they dont 'cache' *cough*bs*cough* - why
am I still going through akamai systems, and why is there a noticable
delay with response from web servers now?

This benifits me how? cnn, nytimes, slashdot etc have always been
accessable to me and fast to access via bigpond - I would actually say it
now takes 4 to 7 seconds longer to access those pages than without the
akamai systems!

Lastly, the page describing "web trends on demand" or "web trends live"
says nothing at all about caches. Maybe they have other products for that,
but bigpond appear to be using "web trends" which is not a
caching/mirroring tool, its a reporting tool.

Kindest regards,

Rohan M.




> Senectus is correct.
>
> You can get information about Akamai's services at
> http://www.akamai.com/en/html/services/overview.html. Basically, they put
> proxies in major datacenters/major ISP hubs around the world, and cache
> their customers sites there - so that, for instance, when a Telstra
> customer
> visits the site of an Akamai customer, the page is served off a Telstra
> server directly on Telstra's backbone, ensuring very fast response times
> for
> the user.
>
> There's nothing malicious about this at all. This is not something Telstra
> have done, it's something the sites you mentioned (cnn.com et al) have
> paid
> large some of money to have done, so that you get a better service.
>
> On 7/4/06, Senectus . <senectus at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> As far as I can tell, akamai technologies are an Internet
>> caching/streaming media delivery service that seem to be very popular
>> around the world.
>> They seem to have a very googlish philosophy about how they build
>> their hardware, with lots of common sense redundancies and smart
>> designs, and they're so good at it they're world wide.
>>
>> seems innocent enough to me.
>>
>>
>> --
>> www.modmeup.net
>> Ubuntu Dapper 6.06
>> The less you know, the more you believe. - Bono
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
>> http://lists.linux.org.au/listinfo/linux-aus
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> There is nothing more worthy of contempt than a man who quotes himself -
> Zhasper, 2004
>