According to reports, Apple has just rolled out its upgraded Content Delivery Network, or CDN, and to us, this equates to faster and more efficient downloads from the company’s servers. With speeds into the terabits per second, it’s quite a substantial bump, and although we tend to focus mainly on the products and software that Apple churns out, this is a more than welcome improvement to the back-end.
There has been no official announcement or press release on the matter, but this is not particularly unusual given the nature of the upgrade. But given the increase in the number of folks purchasing iOS devices â€" Tim Cook noted at WWDC that the figure stood at around 800,000 iPhones, iPads and iPod touches sold since the original iPhone landed back in 2007 â€" it’s no less significant than, say, a new product release.
Indeed, it’s often the case that when you try and download a piece of software â€" a new jailbreak tool, for example â€" servers are clogged under the load as thousands flock to grab it. Given that a large proportion iOS devices users tend to update their software within the first week or so of release, it’s essential that the servers in question are fit for purpose, and with iOS 8 scheduled to land at some time in September alongside the iPhone 6, it’s clear that Apple is ready to invite users in en masse.
Apple’s download infrastructure is such that downloads are pushed directly through big-name ISPs, and although it must pay significant amounts for this privilege, it greatly lessens the likelihood that traffic will overwhelm. The likes of AT&T and Comcast are apparently partners in this system, and it’s something that most large distributors of digital content opt to pursue in order to keep everything running smoothly.
Reports suggest that the new CDN is considerably stronger than would be expected, with the Mac maker clearly investing heavily in this process, and according to Frost & Sullivan’s Dan Rayburn, who is seemingly very clued-in on the matter, this figure may well have topped the $100 million mark.
All this in time for OS X Yosemite 10.10, which, like iOS 8, is expected to hit the end user in the next couple of months.
We’ll keep you informed on any significant news relating to Apple and the tech world in general until then, so stay tuned!
(via: ArsTechnica) [1]
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