In this session we look under the covers of Akamai’s Mapping system to show how data and control combine to improve performance across the internet, in local geographies, and in mobile networks.

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Solving Everyday Problems with Next Generation Mapping
Liz Borowsky, VP Platform Engineering, Akamai Technologies

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What do I mean by mapping anyway?

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A small scale example
One Datacenter

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Mapping: Load Balancing on steroids

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Mapping Fundamentals
Availability
• Content is always accessible
• Even when machines fail
• Even when routing changes
• Even when individual networks have
problems
Performance
• The best Quality of Experience
• Low latency
• High throughput
• Plenty of machine resources
Primary Problem a CDN Mapping system wants to solve:

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The two main approaches to mapping
AnycastedNameserver Mapped
4.3.2.1

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Anycast: Features
• Conceptually simple
• Easy to scale
(to a point)
Inherently
somewhat
centralized

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Anycast: Availability
BGP convergence time
30 seconds to
up to 5 minutes*
* https://labs.ripe.net/Members/vastur/the-shape-of-a-bgp-update

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Anycast: Performance. US data, Gomez Last Mile tests

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Anycast: Challenges – Lack of control
• Load balancing done by BGP tuning
• Hard to use resources efficiently
• At the mercy of BGP churn and convergence
• Scales only to a point

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Nameserver Mapping: Availability
Better Control
20 seconds
to 1 min

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Nameserver Mapping: Performance
Control enables the ability
to be widely
distributed

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Challenge: Nameservers far from end users
Non-optimal mapping
Poor performance

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Great performance
Solution: ECS (EDNS0-Client-Subnet DNS Extension*)
*https://trac.tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7871

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Solution: ECS (EDNS0-Client-Subnet DNS Extension)
Average improvements from enablement with openDNS and GoogleDNS

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Challenge: Scaling the internet
Control = Opportunity

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Challenge: Mobile End Users
End users go through
mobile gateways
Combine clustering with ECS,
but use the Gateway IP Subnet

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Start of a solution: Mobile gateway clustering

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Challenge: Scaling the internet
Control = Opportunity

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Challenge: Congested peering on the global internet
Distribute load
Avoid congestion

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Distribute load away from congested peering
• Measure throughput
• Map away if throughput degrades
• Use distributed platform to get content close to the end user
• Offload overloaded peering links

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Early results

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Challenge: Congested peering on the global internet
Distribute load
Avoid congestion

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The Future
With control comes opportunity…
• ECS in more networks
• More metrics and data
• More control to give better performance
• More control to help the internet scale
• Strategic anycast – best of both worlds

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