Akamai CDN vs. Imperva CDN vs. Uplynk

Akamai is a well-established brand name with a great product. It meets and many time exceeds the needs for global content delivery and security management layer at the edge. Fine grain security tuning seems cumbersome as the definition of the app keeps changing. It also requires an investment of time for the setup which doesn't necessarily make sense for smaller scale scenarios. Some products offered by AWS, Azure or the Google Cloud can be more tightly integrated with cloud provider offerings thus easier to configure.

Incentivized

I recommend it as a WAF, but not as a CDN. There are better CDNs, in my case I use transparentCDN (now www.transparentedge.eu) and Edgecast (now Verizon CDN).

Incentivized

Uplynk is a really useful tool that i am glad our organization has access to. However i find that the steaming software struggles on days when there are many clips being created and this can create a backlog during crucial content posting times. I wish the software was a little more streamlined as well and able to handle multiple users at the same time.

Incentivized

• Content offloading - once rules are set up within Akamai you don't need to even think about how many images or large JavaScript or CSS files (for example) are being served from your own estate, Akamai takes care of it all via rules that are quick, easy and flexible.
• Page caching - for pages that don't change very often Akamai allows you to set up rules, quickly and easily, to serve up your page content for you, which takes even more load away from your origin servers.
• Quick rollback - the Akamai system allows easy testing of rules and changes via a staging system, and also offers a quick rollback option, which is perfect for the rare occasions when something has been set up incorrectly.

Incentivized

• Reliability / Uptime
• Security

Incentivized

• We used Limelight Networks (LLNW) for content storage and reporting. They continued to update and improve the platform. Their customer communication approach had evolved over the years to become very good.
• We webcast live events throughout North America and abroad from multiple locations for multiple clients, simultaneously.
• We built applications on top of LLNW infrastructure.

Incentivized

• The interface in their control centre could be a bit more user-friendly with some of the settings in places that you wouldn't expect them to be. The search offsets this problem to an extent but it's still sometimes slower than you'd like to find what you are looking for.

Incentivized

• CDN functionalities are secondary and cannot be compared to a top-level CDN.
• The WebGUI interface of the dashboard is very improvable. They have been changing the UX for years and it is disjointed and with services that have not yet been migrated.
• The analysis of WAF attack logs is insufficient. It is difficult to analyze attacks of past hours, event filters are missing. It is complicated to analyze the chronology of an attack.
• There are extra modules to improve the attack logs analysis but they are expensive and add little.

Incentivized

• Streaming video issues
• Poor top image selection
• Easier to use timeline for clip navigation

Incentivized

Uplynk has improved greatly in the past year or so but still has some technical quirks that need to be worked out. i think with some improvements to speed and more stability in the program it could be an essential industry tool for our news station. Thank you for the improved performance to date.

Incentivized

Their support documents are excellent and provide a lot of useful information for all their services. The only reason I didn't give them a 10 is that the time it takes for them to respond to an issue could be slightly faster.

Incentivized

We've used -- and considered -- a whole number of CDN offerings. The good news is that almost all of the CDN products on the market are terrific, and will pay for themselves via increased customer satisfaction and lower monthly hosting bills. For some cases, we're still more likely to suggest CloudFlare (which has a free tier) or an integrated offering from a cloud provider, like Cloudfront.

Incentivized

Also TransparentCDN (now www.transparentedge.eu ) and Level 3

Incentivized

We have moved our live webcasting and archived hosting away from LLNW. There were some technical hurdles that we could not overcome, even with their technical support. For our business model, LLNW's fee structure was not competitive with others in their space.

We do appreciate them for trying though.

Incentivized

• Akamai RoI improved over a period of times since it comes with heavy costs, however global deliveries in over 100 counties and global web platforms usage helps improve RoI
• With the complex UI challenges, ROI could be impacted negatively when you have to invest in operations and time.

Incentivized

• It's an expensive product if you have a lot of traffic volume, but I feel confident with their WAF.

Incentivized

• We built our live and archived webcasting part of our business around the LLNW platform. We built a successful business with the assistance of their tools and network. Management is really working hard to ensure clients are happy and are being assisted by the organization.

Incentivized