The basic idea of the architecture is to deliver the contents of a Website to the final user using an Akamai server, located at the edge of the Internet.

This server will always be the best one for that particular user, being the optimal server calculated in function of the user geographic location, network proximity, instant traffic and the load at the infrastructure (servers, network congestion).

Most of the time the Internet user will be served by an Akamai server physically located at the user's ISP.

With this implementation, the user will avoid the network congestion points, getting a better performance of his Internet connection.

Thousands of servers at various locations

Since content delivery is done by multiple servers located at different points (ISPs where Akamai is present), the origin servers, where the original content is stored, will receive only a few requests. The main objective of those origin servers is to refresh the content that were progressively stored on Akamai servers by users' requests. Thus, the origin servers will serve new versions of the content requested by Akamai servers, according to the customer's actualization strategy.