CDN downloads for Apple’s iOS 8
CDN downloads are renowned for their speed. Thanks to the way content delivery networks cache a website’s data to multiple points of presence around the globe, data is served to end users much more quickly as they are routed to the server closest to them. This reduces latency and increases bandwidth, resulting in high speed downloads and increased end user satisfaction.
It is because of this that Apple has been developing a new in house CDN to replace their reliance on Akamai and Level 3’s networks. Whilst Apple has been trialling their CDN with limited use for some of their software downloads, the Wall Street Journal has reported that CDN downloads were used for most of Apple’s recent distribution of their iOS 8 software update.
CDN Downloads to be the Future for Apple
This is the first time such a large-scale roll out was used for CDN downloads and it proved to be a large challenge. At one point during the update roll out, according to data from Internet researcher DeepField, iOS 8 downloads were using 3 terabits of bandwidth per second. To put this in perspective, a terabit is large enough to hold 25 high definition movies.
DeepField Chief Executive, Craig Labovitz, said of this ambitious use of Apple CDN downloads, “it really was a significant coming out party for the Apple CDN. This is definitely a realisation that Apple is not just a software player. They’re not just a maker of PCs. They have an Internet backbone and an international Internet presence.