Akamai awesomeness and Opendns lameness
Akamai footprint awesomeness.
My IP address.
sandipb@pluto:~$ wget -O - -q http://www.whatismyip.com/automation/n09230945.asp;echo
122.167.0.79
sandipb@pluto:~$ host 122.167.0.79
79.0.167.122.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer ABTS-KK-Dynamic-079.0.167.122.airtelbroadband.in.
Akamai CDN for downloading Adobe AIR.
sandipb@pluto:~$ host airdownload.adobe.com
airdownload.adobe.com is an alias for airdownload.wip3.adobe.com.
airdownload.wip3.adobe.com is an alias for airdownload.adobe.com.edgesuite.net.
airdownload.adobe.com.edgesuite.net is an alias for a1396.g.akamai.net.
a1396.g.akamai.net has address 203.101.62.10
a1396.g.akamai.net has address 203.101.62.11
sandipb@pluto:~$ host 203.101.62.10
10.62.101.203.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer dsl-KK-static-010.62.101.203.airtelbroadband.in.
I am downloading from a server co-located at my ISP. Industry standard in US, but I feel really great for this to be happening in India. 😄
Imagine. Download server in India, three hops, 25 ms away!
sandipb@pluto:~$ mtr -i 10 203.101.62.10
My traceroute [v0.73]
pluto (0.0.0.0) Thu Apr 23 01:41:38 2009
Packets Pings
Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1. 192.168.1.1 0.0% 1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 0.0
2. ABTS-KK-Dynamic-001.0.167.122.airtelbroadband.in 0.0% 1 25.4 25.4 25.4 25.4 0.0
3. ABTS-KK-Static-173.32.166.122.airtelbroadband.in 0.0% 1 24.9 24.9 24.9 24.9 0.0
4. ABTS-KK-static-008.32.144.59.airtelbroadband.in 0.0% 1 39.0 39.0 39.0 39.0 0.0
5. dsl-KK-static-010.62.101.203.airtelbroadband.in 0.0% 1 25.0 25.0 25.0 25.0 0.0
Lesson learnt: OpenDNS hurts all this goodness
Thank goodness, I moved off opendns today. This is what opendns was giving me all this past year that I was using it.
sandipb@pluto:~$ dig @208.67.222.222 airdownload.adobe.com
...
;; ANSWER SECTION:
airdownload.adobe.com. 85521 IN CNAME airdownload.wip3.adobe.com.
airdownload.wip3.adobe.com. 218 IN CNAME airdownload.adobe.com.edgesuite.net.
airdownload.adobe.com.edgesuite.net. 20721 IN CNAME a1396.g.akamai.net.
a1396.g.akamai.net. 20 IN A 204.2.160.24
a1396.g.akamai.net. 20 IN A 204.2.160.34
sandipb@pluto:~$ host 204.2.160.24
24.160.2.204.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer a204-2-160-24.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com.
sandipb@pluto:~$ ping -c 1 204.2.160.24
PING 204.2.160.24 (204.2.160.24) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 204.2.160.24: icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=259 ms
A download server 260ms and 11 hops away in US.
Using opendns is breaking anything which uses CDN. Now I have used opendns for a while and it is nice at its work. But believe me, we spend more time downloading videos and text than querying DNS, and if you have a DNS cache at home (like djbdns) or even your ISP’s DNS, it works a lot as well.