Colleges Shocked to Discover Akamai Servers on Campuses Helped Speed Porn, Gaming Sites
Akamai Technologies, the Cambridge Internet company, is using server computers installed on networks at university campuses to help deliver content for teen-pornography Web sites and offshore gambling sites whose legality is in question.
Under a partnership intended to give schools faster, cheaper Net access while they defray some of Akamai’s operating costs, Akamai has installed devices to speed delivery of Web sites to millions of Net users at schools including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts, Babson College, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Vermont, and Wesleyan.
A tantalizing headline, yes, but a good article on the issues facing companies involved in serving bandwidth to users. Porn is always a questionable issue, but companies like Akamai have a powerful, if relatively background and unknown purpose: to ease the log jam in Internet traffic by caching and serving highly requested content on a localized basis.
