Akamai vs. Cloudflare

So most of you probably heard that internet service for some very large customers (not everyone) was interrupted today for an hour or so. It appears that Akamai caused the problem when they were trying to update their OS. They said it was caused by a bug and not a cyber attack. I’m not sure I buy this explanation. Any new SW is normally tested repeatedly before it is implemented. So whatever the case, this could benefit Cloudflare/NET. NET was up 4% today so that is a good start.

V/T

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  1. No software is perfect.
  2. No software testing is perfect.
  3. These are complex automated configurations that are deployed by automation, and a few large cloud providers have had errors recently in their automated deployments.

So there’s not enough to say it was a hack, where “operator error” is more likely.

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This is where NET’s free user base may serve as a big advantage compared to others. We’ve now seen both Fastly and Akamai’s networks failing because of poorly tested new updates. As Matther Price mentioned several times in the past, NET benefits from its large free user base by being able use them to test out new releases and fix any issues prior to rolling out changes to its paid user base. This not only contributes to rapid development and testing cycles but also to more reliable releases. Combine that with enthusiactic and engaged free user base that is willing to highlight any issues and those free users may just turn out to be priceless.

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