Dyn Launches Internet Intelligence Tool With Unique Perspective On iOS 8 Internet Impact

Earlier this week, Dyn launched a new Internet Intelligence platform that allows customers to look at the routing that makes content delivery possible and see the performance between transit providers that impacts customer experience. Using the tool to look at Apple iOS 8 release gives a global view of the event and what is happening at any moment. Performance of Apple’s own CDN, third-party CDNs and operator networks matter, but the interconnection of the CDNs to those eyeball networks is not often examined as a link in the performance chain. Understanding where the iOS 8 download is being served from is the first step and using the specific download URLs, a map can be built that shows the location of each CDN POP and who is serving the traffic from each. As I reported earlier, Apple is delivering the majority of the traffic themselves, with Akamai,  Limelight Networks and Level 3 all sharing in the portion of traffic Apple has outsourced.

This view is a map of where the different CDNs during the release were and what they were serving, specifically for the iOS 8 download. Dyn can produce this view in real time for the actual URLs for all of the files.

If you want to look at specific parts of the world to see exactly how the CDNs are connected, you can examine each of the nodes and how they route traffic through the Internet. This view of Frankfurt, Germany gave a very interesting view, showing when Apple connected to their own CDN versus when they were connected to those of Limelight or Akamai.

Performance upstream of the CDN can cause problems across a customer base. The image below depicts a slow-down inside Amsterdam on Level 3 during the peak hours of the download. The examination can take place on a hop-by-hop basis so each provider in the delivery chain can be examined for performance changes.