This talk describes Akamai's Internet content delivery service called FreeFlow. Akamai has deployed over 8000 servers on more than 350 networks around the world, and delivers content for more than 1000 customers. The talk begins with a review of the mechanics of content delivery on the Internet, and then examines the unique features of Akamai's massively distributed system. After addressing several of the technological challenges faced in designing such a system, the talk concludes by presenting two theoretical problems that arose during its implementation.

Bruce Maggs received the S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985, 1986, and 1989, respectively. After spending one year as a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT, he worked as a Research Scientist at NEC Research Institute in Princeton from 1990 to 1993. In 1994, he moved to Carnegie Mellon, where he is now an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department. While on a two-year leave-of-absence from Carnegie Mellon, Maggs helped to launch Akamai Technologies, serving as its Vice President for Research and Development, before returning to Carnegie Mellon. He retains a part-time role at Akamai as Vice President for Research.

Maggs's research focuses on networks for parallel and distributed computing systems. In 1986, he became the first winner (with Charles Leiserson) of the Daniel L. Slotnick Award for Most Original Paper at the International Conference on Parallel Processing, and in 1994 he received an NSF National Young Investigator Award. He was co-chair of the 1993-1994 DIMACS Special Year on Massively Parallel Computation and has served on the program committees of SPAA, SODA, STOC, PODC, and many other technical conferences.

Host: Rajmohan Rajaraman