Level 3 CDN versus Webair CDN
 

cdn was certainly the buzz at the phoenix forum, what are the differences between Level 3 and the Webair CDN?

i would say, he who has more money, has better infrastructure.... as far as price and customer service, i would have to say webair because they are smaller and have the ability to be more hands on...

level 3 has a huge network, thousands of servers, like akami, limelight

webair sounds like its their own setup, since limelight got shaky a month ago, webair probably set up some deals and have their own little network of servers going. not sure what the difference is in cache they are talking about


amkingdom, karups, teenrevenue are using level 3. paolo from teenrevenue wouldnt stop talking about it at the show last week, thinks its going to take his program to the next level

We (ATK) are using the Level 3 CDN and it is amazing the difference before and after. As far as performance its awesome, and we are getting some VERY competitive pricing on it. Now the only con I am seeing on it right now is the provisioning time is a little long, like usually a week, but for the price they are giving me I can not complain.

Webair CDN
 

I am not sure if Web Air is using their own infrastructure or high winds CDN, but from the description it sounds like High winds.

I talked to a lot of people at the show about the service and special thanks to Paulo for Pimping me out and doing my job for me.

I am the Cave Creek CDN guy so please do not hesitate to hit me up if I can answer everything.

Brian L
ICQ- 6124460

Level3 is smart guys with a great product. Webair is cool and I like Mike but level3 is solid as hell and has been for years. We have been very happy with the test we ran and they made it work with out Mansion CMS.

Brian is the man when it comes to CDN tech, he helped me a lot when I had questions, he has great knowledge on the subject and is a good person to hit up for info.

Webmaster Checks,

The main differences between our CDN and the others including Level 3, is that our CDN offers PUSH Technology which gives the customer more control over the content on the CDN & allows for instant content updates without having to change meta tags or waiting for cache timeouts. This model allows for increased REDUNDANCY & SECURITY over traditional CDN models as well.

Here are a few other options that we offer with our CDN:

- Share bandwidth commits between your servers and your CDN.
- Drag and drop content from traditional hosting to CDN hosting
- Seamlessly integrated into our USER FRIENDLY control panel or simple FTP client.
- Full web based stats package included

All of this can be managed from one account! with level 3 it's a separate company so you will have 2 accounts to manage. If you are an existing WEBAIR.COM client you can manage everything under one account!

I'm not here to slam Level 3 or any of their clients such as Cave Creek, I am simply pointing out the facts. Level3 bought their CDN from Savvis, who bought it from Cable and Wireless, who bought it from Digital Island. If you are a business owner you can imagine the fallout of the people who created and managed it along the way! Level3 is a carrier company, not to mention it's simply older technology. With traditional cache based CDN your content is deleted after a certain set time parameter is reached. With our CDN your content is actually duplicated and stored across 15 locations and distributed instantly! It's always there!

This makes for a FASTER more ROBUST type of CDN...


Q & A::
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BrianL - We do not resell high winds.

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Karupted Charles - You know as well as i do how quickly technology changes! I invite you guys to come and test our services. BTW - How have you been my friend long time no speak =) Miss you bud!

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Grays "We (ATK) are using the Level 3 CDN and it is amazing the difference before and after. As far as performance its awesome, and we are getting some VERY competitive pricing on it. Now the only con I am seeing on it right now is the provisioning time is a little long, like usually a week, but for the price they are giving me I can not complain."

- We can set you up INSTANTLY if you would like a test please feel free to contact me. As far as rates go we are very competitive.

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jcsike - Our offer goes out to you as well please feel free to contact me If you would like to try us out!

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Try doing a traceroute from an IP outside the United States on a Level3 CDN enabled site. It goes from Europe to the US and back to Europe. Like 30 hops.

thats exactly what i found too....i thought it was just an error coming from one of my servers overseas

The last thing I want to do is get into a CDN pissing contest , but I want to address a few points.

1) The CDN you are buying from us is through Cave Creek. We are the reselling Level 3 and our team will be providing the support so it is also a one stop shop for service.
2) I was with Savvis before CC and I can tell you with utter certainty that the CDN which Savvis had is not what L3 is offering they have completely upgraded every single node on the network and have just around 3000 servers world wide. in over 70 countries.
3) Push technology is a good way to serve content , but it is ideally suited for what we call Long Tail content where it is a large library of files with varying degrees of popularity. L3 is already offering Net storage with 250TB of capacity which would make the pull pretty fast and the difference nominal. In April they will release the Long Tail offering with will use hierarchal caching. Push is also much easier to do when you have a small CDN network at fewer nodes.
4) also we are back in forth on CDN , but Level 3 also offer their completely rebuilt streaming network which allows flash or windows media at the same price and can support H.264 HD content.

Ok. I leave it there, and really I hate this having turned into a big commercial. I am sure WebAir is a solid company and I do not know much about what they offer so it would be irresponsible for me to judge.


on the L3 trace route issue. Long traces to a server is more about the network it is originating from than the CDN network. Certain European networks have issues in terms of where they drop the traffic and how the Teir 1 provider chooses to route it.

If you can send me the traces I would be happy to help you escalate it.

We are currently with Akamai and moving over to Level3. Limelight sucks balls we already tried them a couple years ago, and it practically didnt even work.

mike and brian, thanks for clearing that up

#1.

Webair resells the Level(3) CDN, so not much difference. Its simply "rebranded" to be the "webair cdn"

they posted they dont use Level 3, when they switched from limelight, they probably sent 15 servers to data centers around the world to form their own cdn, thats what it sounds like



Quote:
Originally Posted by Net Money
So are you using the Level3 CDN ??

Net Money

No we do not use Level 3 CDN. Our CDN technology integrates seamlessly with your existing hosting account no matter where you currently host.

webair

what do you guys carry?

at the moment we have not started reselling the level(3) cdn, though we may but for our mainstream customers who broadcast ESPN and Hockey games and stream their videos live and need it to satisfy the corps they have as clients.

the price difference for the very small benefit of the cdn is not worth it to most customers who actually are in the know and are not serving a live stream.
everyone else, will pay more just for the hype. everyone at phoenix forum was probably all "in the hype" of cdn and will pay more for bandwidth just because of that with no real benefits being received.

in the end a CDN will not give you much faster speeds in the USA. any good host can provide speeds fast enough to satisfy your members video viewing, no cdn required

I am offering CDN at or Below what most players are paying for BW and have several customers who are using it who will disagree with you vehemently about US site performance.I have tested hundreds of sites in 10 years in CDN and I can tell you There are some pretty good hosters in the mainstream space including some very large companys, but still close to 60% of all mainstream sites use CDN with Akamai to deliver traffic even in the US . I understand your need to defend your hosting service , but to call CDN "hype" is just silly. CDN has been around for many years and every site you go to from Amazon to Google to Yahoo, etc has been using it for years. The only reason the adult community is not using it is because Akamai will not sell adult and until L3 stepped up to build their "blue" platform in conjunction with CaveCreek/CCbill there really were very few significant CDN options available to the space. Now there is and if we can price CDN at the same price as regular bandwidth and your site is faster all over the world including in the US why wouldn't you do it?

check it yourself at testyourhost

What are the rates like per ~20TB (100Mbps line) ?

Eman we would be happy to give you a quote and a test contact us at your earliest convenience.

[email protected] :thumbsup

Contact me off line if you'd like to discuss prices.

Because of the way a CDN works, a traceroute is not a good test. Also, traditionally, the site itself is not usually on the CDN...only the content is, so if you traceroute the site, you're just hitting the host the site is on, not hitting the actual CDN.

-- Bill

This is not true. NationalNet and CaveCreek have a two year exclusive agreement with Level3 so it's highly unlikely that anyone other than us is selling it.

With regards to the hype; while it is true that CDN is the new buzzword, it is also true that the Level3 CDN WORKS extremely well. We have had about 6 customers run a trial on it, and in every case, their next move was to move all of their content to it.

There are many CDN's out there, but be aware of what you are getting if you go for a cheap one. I won't mention names, but for instance, some of them don't have any coverage in Asia or South America or have spotty coverage in other parts of the world. Some of them run on the bittorrent network. Some of them cannot do member authenticated content.

Level3 is routinely ranked number 1 in the world with regards to network reach and quality and they have spent a ton of money not only making sure that the CDN performs but that there are ton of features, including the new Flash 3 with the H.264 High-Definition codec (coming next month).

A year ago, you could not have given me a CDN, but I after testing it myself, I am 100% convinced that Level3 got it right.

If you're interested, you need to talk to either myself (sales AT nationalnet DOT com) or Brian and we can provide more details. Free trials for the right buyers are also available.

-- Bill

If you traceroute one of the CDN enabled image subdomains that's on Level3's CDN for example from a non-US IP, you'll see what I mean.

My point is that it is a bit more complicated than that and a traceroute is not going to give you accurate information. A traceroute is always going to take you back to the same source with the CDN redirection software lives.

-- Bill

I have someone in my conference room right this second meeting with another sales guy about reselling the Level(3) CDN to us all because of the hype at the Phoenix forum. If people want to buy "CDN" then no reason why we can't offer the same CDN that NationalNet, CaveCreek, Webair are offering. Level(3) CDN... here we come! :)

"15 locations" is the Level(3) calling card, as well as the "push" ability.

Actually, I take that back. Webair is using PantherCDN not Level(3)

WEBAIR.COM is not using panther CDN...

If you are interested in reselling our CDN contact me I'll set you up. Feel free to contact me.

why do you keep posting things as fact when you are guessing?

dont pays attention to that pacific rack crap i looked em up cause dey pricing was so low. dey just resellers of the competitions cheap newboids be gone in a month yellin :helpme :helpme

the difference is i love webair.

i can tell you one thing. the guys in CCBill Policy Review love reviewing sites using cdn, you dont have the same problems with sites that it takes 30 min to review a video :)

We switched over to the webair CDN and couldn't be happier. Mountains of simultaneous users all served with unprecedented blazing speed.

What does CDN stand for ? Content diffusion network I guess ?

content delivery network

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Delivery_Network

Right on MCPENT! :thumbsup

how many servers are supporting your cdn right now?

um...... Webair is in competition to Level3?

I think not.

Webair suck.

-Ben

webair has a pretty good reputation in hosting, you have to admit.

LMAO.....:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Webair doesn't have a good rep..... They have hundreds of shills posting for their referral
fees, and a bunch of non-tech managers who believe the hype.

-Ben

PR here is to stay... and the competition??? say my name BITCH!

Wow what professional response! people must be linin up to host wit you :1orglaugh

BOOOYAKASHHHHHHHA

is webair blocking their sites from ccbills testyourhost.com? im getting an error

has anyone done real studies to show the improvements gained from CDN usage versus beefing up current hosting plans?

There have been many studies showing CDN is faster, just search online and you will find tons of information, but the most compelling I think is that this is absolutely the way mainstream has been delivering their traffic for years. Sites that use CDN today and have been doing so since the mid 90s include Amazon, Google, Apple,Microsoft, Ebay, Disney,CNN, and the list goes on and on.

Adult has not used CDN for 2 reasons. 1) It has up till now been way too expensive for programs looking to keep content lean and profit margins high, especially the way bandwidth pricing has dropped in the last 5 years. 2) there has not been a significant CDN player in quite a while who has been willing to accept adult content. The largest player Akamai shut off Adult when it went public and all the mid tear players were either bought by them or put out of business by them.

We are still offering a free trial on the Cave Creek/ Level 3 CDN why not just see for yourself. Anecdotal evidence and spreadsheets do not compete with real life experience.

We have and have been very impressed. There was a increase in speed to US customers but the biggest difference we saw was in europe and asia.

Agreed Charles we been have impressed with the speeds and technology our CDN offers as well. It seems that L3 will be switching over to the technology we are currently have available!

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/a..._delivery.html

I'd love for you to test it out on a free trial basis and compare it to what you are currently on!

I have always been a believer in not bashing my competition. If you have a good service then it should speak for itself

L3 is adding Longtail as part of their service set,not in place of , but they are setting it up to support thousands of servers in numerous locations worldwide. It is hardly the same thing . In addition they are releasing Flash 3.0 streaming supporting h.264 streaming as well as Silverlight streaming, Geo-ip blocking , tokenbased authentication, standing up 250TB of storage in 4 locations in US and Europe.

This is a service they have invested millions in to grow out and develop and it is based on technology which has survived patent suits from all the major players.