Akamai - technical definition

(Akamai Technologies, Inc., Cambridge, MA, www.akamai.com) The largest content delivery network (CDN) with more than 30,000 servers around the world. Founded in 1998, Akamai licensed algorithms developed by MIT scientists to develop a high-performance network that could route traffic to the most expedient Web server depending on the source of the request and traffic conditions. Akamai, pronounced "ah-ka-my") is Hawaiian for intelligent, or "cool."

In addition to general Web acceleration and downloading, streaming services and server-side processing, Akamai provides a comprehensive media management solution. Content providers can upload their newly created media to the Akamai Stream OS system for content delivery, digital rights management (DRM) and extensive reporting. See CDN.