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The reason bandwidth costs money is not because ISPs and Akamai and other CDNs are greedy, it's because the infrastructure behind it costs money. Building your
by DarkShikari 17y ago
The reason bandwidth costs money is not because ISPs and Akamai and other CDNs are greedy, it's because the infrastructure behind it costs money.
Building your own inftrastructure doesn't make bandwidth free, it just eliminates the cut that the provider normally takes.
Also, Akamai doesn't charge by the megabyte either, they charge by the megabit per second, as does most anyone once you start dealing with Facebook or Youtube-size loads.
- mrkurt 17y agoYes, that's what I meant when I said "mb", perhaps 95th percentile billing would have been more explicit. And when you start dealing with Facebook or Youtube sized loads, you generally start peering rather than just buying transit from various providers. When you peer, you no longer pay a 95th. You work out a peering deal with some provider you send a lot of traffic to and effectively connect directly to them in some shared facility. Some providers will charge you a 95th rate when you peer, but even then it's vastly cheaper than what you'd be paying for normal transit.
- kierank 17y agoGenerally with CDNs you get charged per GB until a certain amount. Then it'll depend on your specific contract whether its GB or Mbps; there's no hard and fast rule.
- Teulon 17y agoThe people who run that infrastructure can also help run other infrastructure, or the bandwidth can be used for more than just YouTube. That reduces the cost more.