Content Delivery Networks: How Akamai Accelerates Web Performance

Have you ever wondered why websites load so quickly, even when millions of people are visiting them at the same time? The secret weapon is called a CDN (Content Delivery Network), and one of the players in this game is Akamai. Let me explain how it works in the simplest way possible!

The Pizza Delivery Analogy

Imagine if there was only ONE pizza restaurant in the entire country, and everyone had to order from that single location. If you lived far away, your pizza would take hours to arrive and would probably be cold and soggy by the time it got to you.

Now imagine if that same pizza chain opened locations in every city. Suddenly, you’d get your pizza from the nearest location - it would arrive hot, fresh, and fast! That’s exactly what Akamai does for websites.

Every once in a while, when the pizza supply gets stale, the regional pizza shops make a trip to the main warehouse to restock the pizzas.

What Is Akamai?

Akamai is like a network of thousands of pizza shops, but instead of delivering pizza, it delivers website content. When a company uses Akamai, their website content (images, videos, web pages) gets copied to thousands of servers around the world. These servers are called “edge servers” because they’re at the “edge” of the network, close to you.

When you visit a website that uses Akamai, instead of traveling all the way to the company’s main server (which might be on the other side of the world), the content comes from the nearest Akamai server. This makes everything load much faster!

The Different Types of Resources Akamai Delivers

Just like a restaurant serves different types of food, Akamai handles different types of content:

1. Images and Photos

Think about Instagram or any shopping website. They have millions of images! Akamai stores copies of these images on servers worldwide. When you open a webpage, the photos load from a nearby server instead of traveling across the ocean.

2. Videos

Ever watched a movie on Netflix or a video on YouTube? Video files are HUGE - much bigger than photos. Akamai specialises in delivering videos smoothly without buffering. It breaks videos into small chunks and sends them from the closest server, so your movie night doesn’t turn into a loading screen nightmare.

3. JavaScript and CSS Files

These are the “instructions” that tell your browser how to make a website look pretty and work correctly. They’re like the recipe that tells your computer how to build the webpage. Akamai makes sure these files arrive quickly so websites don’t look broken or weird while loading.

4. HTML Pages

These are the actual web pages themselves - the basic structure of what you see. Akamai can cache (store) copies of these pages so they load instantly.

5. Software Downloads and Updates

When you download a game, app, or software update, it might be coming through Akamai. This prevents the company’s servers from getting overwhelmed when millions of people try to download the same thing at once (like when a new video game drops).

6. Live Streams

When you watch a live sports game or a concert streaming online, Akamai helps make sure millions of people can watch at the same time without the stream crashing.

How Does Akamai Know Which Server to Use?

This is the clever part. When you type in a website address, Akamai’s system automatically figures out:

• Where you are in the world
• Which of their servers is closest to you
• Which server has the best connection at that moment
• Which server isn’t too busy

Then it sends your request to the best server for the job. It all happens in milliseconds - faster than you can blink!

Why Do Companies Use Akamai?

Speed: Pages load 2-10 times faster because content travels shorter distances

Reliability: If one server goes down, another one takes over automatically

Handling Traffic Spikes: When millions of people visit at once (like during a big sale or breaking news), the load is spread across thousands of servers instead of crashing one server

Security: Akamai also protects websites from hackers and cyberattacks by filtering out bad traffic before it reaches the main servers

Akamai Configuration Architecture - Core Components

Understanding how Akamai delivers content is one thing, but knowing how to configure and manage it requires familiarity with its core resource types. Let’s examine the key components that make up an Akamai implementation.

Properties: Configuration Containers

A Property is the fundamental configuration unit in Akamai. It defines how the CDN should handle requests for a specific hostname or set of hostnames. Each property contains the complete delivery configuration including origin settings, caching policies, security rules, and performance optimisations.

Properties are typically organised around logical boundaries such as individual websites, applications, or environments (production, staging, development). Large enterprises often manage dozens or hundreds of properties across different business units or brands. Each property is versioned, allowing you to stage and test changes before activating them to production or staging networks.

Rules and Behaviours: The Policy Engine

Rules and Behaviours form Akamai’s declarative configuration language. Rather than writing imperative code, you define policies through a hierarchical rule tree structure.

Rules act as conditional logic gates with match criteria based on request attributes such as path, file extension, query parameters, request headers, geographic location, or client characteristics. Rules can be nested to create complex decision trees.

Behaviours are the actions executed when rule conditions are met. Common behaviours include cache TTL settings, origin selection, compression algorithms, header manipulation, redirects, token authentication, and security controls. Each behaviour exposes specific parameters that fine-tune its operation.

This rule-behaviour architecture provides granular control over request processing without requiring custom code deployment. The Property Manager interface translates these configurations into edge logic that executes at Akamai’s servers.

Edge Hostnames: DNS CNAME Targets

An Edge Hostname is the Akamai-provided hostname that serves as the CNAME target for your production hostname. This is the critical DNS mapping that directs traffic into Akamai’s network.

The implementation flow works as follows: your production hostname (www.example.com) has a DNS CNAME record pointing to an edge hostname (example.com.edgekey.net or example.com.edgesuite.net). When a client resolves your hostname, DNS returns Akamai’s edge servers through this CNAME chain. Akamai’s authoritative DNS then returns the optimal edge server IP addresses based on the client’s location, network conditions, and server availability.

Edge hostnames can be shared across multiple properties or dedicated to a single property depending on your certificate configuration and organisational preferences. The edgekey.net and edgesuite.net domains indicate different product tiers with varying feature sets and performance characteristics.

CPS Enrollments: Certificate Lifecycle Management

The Certificate Provisioning System (CPS) automates SSL/TLS certificate management across Akamai’s global infrastructure. A CPS enrollment defines the certificate configuration for one or more hostnames.

CPS handles the complete certificate lifecycle including certificate generation, validation, deployment to edge servers, and automated renewal. It supports various validation methods (DV, OV, EV) and can work with both Akamai-managed certificates and third-party certificates from your preferred certificate authority.

For high-traffic sites, CPS can deploy certificates using Standard TLS, Enhanced TLS, or Shared Certificate models. Enhanced TLS provides dedicated IP addresses for maximum compatibility, while Shared Certificate uses SNI to serve multiple domains from shared IPs. CPS integrations with your property configurations ensure certificates are correctly associated with edge hostnames and automatically propagated to all edge servers worldwide.

EdgeDNS: Authoritative DNS Infrastructure

EdgeDNS is Akamai’s managed authoritative DNS service, built on the same global infrastructure that powers the CDN. It provides enterprise-grade DNS with high availability, DDoS protection, and ultra-low latency resolution.

EdgeDNS supports standard DNS record types (A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, etc.) plus advanced features like geographic routing, weighted load balancing, and failover configurations. Zone configurations can be managed via the Control Center UI, API, or zone file imports.

The service operates across Akamai’s distributed nameserver infrastructure, providing redundancy and performance that’s difficult to achieve with traditional DNS architectures. EdgeDNS integrates naturally with other Akamai products, though it can also be used standalone for domains not using Akamai CDN services.

GTM: Intelligent Traffic Management

Global Traffic Management (GTM) provides sophisticated traffic steering and failover capabilities across multiple origins, datacenters, or cloud providers. GTM operates at the DNS layer, returning different IP addresses based on real-time intelligence.

Key GTM capabilities include active health monitoring with customisable probe configurations, performance-based routing using RUM (Real User Monitoring) and synthetic tests, datacenter load distribution, and geographic proximity routing. GTM can implement complex failover strategies with automatic datacenter failover when health checks detect issues.

GTM domains are configured with properties that define traffic targets, liveness tests, and load balancing algorithms. When a client queries a GTM-enabled hostname, GTM evaluates all available targets against current health status and performance metrics, then returns the optimal IP address. This enables active-active datacenter architectures, cloud migration strategies, and disaster recovery implementations.

Integration and Request Flow

These components integrate to form a complete content delivery pipeline. A typical request flow proceeds as follows:

1. Client resolves hostname via EdgeDNS or external DNS
2. DNS CNAME chain leads to edge hostname
3. Akamai’s DNS returns geographically optimal edge server IPs
4. Client establishes TLS connection using CPS-managed certificate
5. Edge server processes request through property’s rule tree
6. Rules and behaviours determine caching, origin fetch, or transformation logic
7. GTM (if configured) selects optimal target based on health and performance
8. Response is delivered with appropriate optimisations applied

This architecture separates concerns between DNS resolution, traffic management, TLS termination, and content delivery logic. Each component can be configured and updated independently while maintaining a cohesive delivery strategy.

Configuration Management Considerations

Managing these resources at scale requires attention to versioning, change control, and testing procedures. Properties support activation workflows with separate staging and production networks for validation. CPS enrollments have renewal timelines that require advance planning. GTM and EdgeDNS configurations impact availability and should follow infrastructure-as-code practices with API-driven management and version control.

Understanding these component relationships is essential for effective Akamai operations, whether you’re implementing a new configuration, troubleshooting delivery issues, or optimising performance at scale.