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To: nohalo who wrote (3980)	8/1/1999 2:59:00 PM
From: soup	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 5843

Akamai, Apple and QT ... (cribbed from jonceramic at Raging Bull) >The relationship between QT and Akamai is this. Streaming data (video or audio) can be served from anywhere. The problem is that the internet isn't a direct fat pipe. Instead, imagine a football field full of people. Have them run around randomly for a minute, and then yell "freeze". Then, put a bucket full of numbered hot potatoes at one goal post. Start throwing them one at a time to the nearest person without a potato with the goal of hot potatoing the entire bucket of potatoes to the other goal line. To complicate the matter, you have to keep tossing the potatoes around because each potato has to come in numerical order. This is the problem with streaming video. A streaming server (the guy with the full bucket of potatoes) can be very, very efficient at sending out his numbered potatoes ("packets") in order one after another, but the links in between are horrible at passing the potatoes in an efficient or coordinated manner. They get mixed up, arrive at different times, and sometimes never even make it. But, imagine if you set someone halfway down the field who was really good at catching the potatoes thrown straight at them from half the field. That would save half of the field's length from the confusion of tossing small distances with many steps. Akamai does the same thing for Apple. Basically, they set up "server farms" which get streams of data straight from the original server. These farms are located so that they reduce the number of paths needed for the data to travel to your computer. Plus, since right now, each connection to a computer user has to be sent individually, they multiply the possible number of streams that can be sent out at once. So, one main server generates a "pure" stream to a few hundred or few thousand Akamai servers. Then, each of those hundreds or thousands of servers sends streams to thousands of viewers. One of the tricky aspects of this is having it all look like it's coming from one source (say, www.apple.com/movie.qt) when it's really being served from all over the place. This is also called mirroring by some. One of the theories I floated a few days ago was that AOL (and the other ISP's) have actual, physical buildings set up throughout the country where they have fat internet pipes, central connections where their users dial in, and a staff already hired to maintain such. To me, leveraging those existing facilities and having very local, mirrored streams would be much easier than Akamai coming into a new town, hiring a new staff, renting a new building, building a new relationship with the local telco's, etc. etc. Plus, AOL has a proprietary interface and "world" that the general internet world can't access. AOL-TV powered by Quicktime would tend to be a very, very nice fit, IMHO. So, is Akamai required for QTSS (quicktime streaming server), nope. But, it is the infrastructure required to make it a reliable, national service. (BTW, Akamai is used for non-QTSS data also. It's real important when, say, a new updater is released and a million people try to download it at once.) Hope I clarified more than confused. Please correct me if I got anything wrong. Jon< ragingbull.com

To: nohalo who wrote (3980)	8/1/1999 3:06:00 PM
From: soup	Respond to of 5843

Pressure Seen Rising For Single Messaging Standard. via Reuters >AOL formed its own advisory committee on the issue composed mainly of executives from companies well-known as Microsoft adversaries including Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq:SUNW - news), Novell Inc. (Nasdaq:NOVL - news), RealNetworks Inc. (Nasdaq:RNWK - news) and Apple Computer Inc. (Nasdaq:AAPL - news)< dailynews.yahoo.com Would like to be a fly on the wall when Rob Glaser and Steve Jobs start discussing future audio/video IM standards.