Whether it's videos on JW Broadcasting or PDFs on jw.org, all downloads used to be archived in-house at "assets.jw.org/" followed by the items name/code. Now clicking a download link retrieves the items from akamai.net, a web services company.
All downloads no longer hosted on jw.org
by neat blue dog 17 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
-
konceptual99
Unsurprising move. Akamai facilities scalable hosting. Shame it will be offline as soon as the big A hits :-) -
Londo111
Videos are the new Watchtower and Awake and even printing those are being outsourced, so it is a logical cost cutting step.
-
committeechairman
Akamai also provides edge download services....meaning that when you request a download you get the file from the closest Akamai servers to your area instead of from one place such as New York. This drastically speeds up downloads to end users.
It's a smart move to improve performance of downloads in the field.
CC
-
neat blue dog
So . . . then it's a luxury? If they're trying to cut back, why now pay regular fees to a company just so the brothers can download their stuff a little bit faster? There's got to be more to it.
-
stuckinarut2
What other "questionable" stuff does Akamai host?
Would be funny to see that if company hosts content that the society objects to..
-
neat blue dog
Nah, no more than you share guilt by eating at a restaurant that once catered a church gathering. It's irrelevant because it's just paying for a service. Question is: why? It costs money, so why is it worth it?
-
Barrold Bonds
It's far cheaper to use a service like Akamai than hosting that much shit yourself
-
WTWizard
Now, I wonder what happens if the server craps out. Hosting it yourself, you get a premium server, it is rarely down. Once you farm it out, you are putting control in someone else's hands. What if that server decides that the religion is crap? What if the server itself is crap? Even if it is not, you are putting the control in someone else's hands--who might blow you in if any great tribulation were to strike.
And I hope the prices of the service go way up. I hope the server's owner realizes the whole washtowel is a scam, and decides to jack the price way up. Not to mention, I hope they run into something that is blatantly harmful to society, even that contradicts other material, and start letting the authorities look at it. At which point, they decide that there is too much bait and switch, too much coercion to stay in, too much hiding problems that arise within the religion, and start busting the religion. That's what can happen when you farm out material.
-
Simon
No, it's the other way round - using edge-caching / CDNs are an easier and cheaper way to guarantee availability. Some even provide peer-to-peer distribution where parts of your files are sent from other users who have them (like torrents).
It's always going to be more robust than a single, central server (esp. self-managed) and there are little risks because you have control over DNS settings and can redirect where things point to if you ever need.
These are commercial companies and won't care about what is being distributed as long as it's not illegal and someone is paying the bill.