A very odd thing just happened to me this morning. While browsing on NewEgg in Firefox 3.5.2, I noticed that my browser slowed down. 
Using TCPview, I noticed that I had a lot of TCP connections opened to cpe-24-29-138-176.nyc.res.rr.com. That struck me as very odd. I thought I had spyware loaded on my computer or something, and that bug was phoning-home.
Upon further investigation, I find that whenever I reloaded a NewEgg page, especially if it was a page with lots of images, several of these TCP sessions would open up again. So I decided to look at the source code of the NewEgg page.
Doing a NSLOOKUP on the hostname c1.neweggimages.com gave me a very interesting result.
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: a200.g.akamai.net
Addresses: 24.29.138.176, 24.29.138.186
Aliases: c1.neweggimages.com, images10.newegg.com.edgesuite.net
The IP addresses 24.29.138.176 and 24.19.138.186, both are residential RoadRunner cable modem dynamic IPs according to NYC RoadRunner; reverse resolving to cpe-24-29-138-176.nyc.res.rr.com and cpe-24-29-138-186.nyc.res.rr.com, respectively. 
It struck me very odd that Akamai would use such home-grade dynamic broadband connections to provide their expensive edge-of-network services.
A few minutes later, I did another NSLOOKUP and the IPs changed, as it should with the Akamai service to spread the traffic around their servers.
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: a200.g.akamai.net
Addresses: 209.107.209.91, 209.107.209.122
Aliases: c1.neweggimages.com, images10.newegg.com.edgesuite.net
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: a200.g.akamai.net
Addresses: 77.67.91.72, 77.67.91.122
Aliases: c1.neweggimages.com, images10.newegg.com.edgesuite.net
And as I am writing this blog entry, c1.neweggimages.com now resolves to:
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: a200.g.akamai.net
Addresses: 24.29.138.172, 24.29.138.162
Aliases: c1.neweggimages.com, images10.newegg.com.edgesuite.net
Once again traffic routed back onto RoadRunner residential service in NYC (reverse resolving to cpe-24-29-138-172.nyc.res.rr.com and cpe-24-29-138-162.nyc.res.rr.com). Looks like Akamai is using a lot of residential IPs within the NYC RoadRunner network.
As a result, some of these residential IPs do not work all the time, causing the NewEgg (and now BUY.COM) pages not to load and just hang.
Would you pay Akamai to basically host your images at someone’s home using a cable modem?
I know I would not pay premium dollars to get stuff hosted at a home. I like the redundancy of a data center.
