Akamai, McAfee.com Help Conquer “Love” Virus

Akamai Technologies Inc., a provider of distributed content, streaming media and applications delivery, and McAfee.com, an ASP of on-line PC security and management services, Monday announced they jointly helped to resolve issues resulting from the “I Love You” virus.

Through the use of the Akamai (AKAM) FreeFlow service, McAfee.com (MCAF) handled record-breaking traffic to its site, which includes critical information, updates and downloadable protection files, for the virus.

McAfee.com uses FreeFlow for the delivery of more than half of its on-line virus
protection applications and its rich web content. During the first
24 hours after the virus struck last Thursday, the site began receiving massive amounts
of traffic from those in search of protection. Using FreeFlow,
the site supported 4.6 million. McAfee.com’s virus
signature files, which contain protection from the virus, were also heavily
accessed. More than 500,000 downloads of
virus protection software files were delivered the first day.

“The combination of Akamai’s service with
our highly scalable architecture allowed us to handle the
unprecedented spikes in traffic that amounted to more than five times the
normal average,” said Doug Cavit, vice president of information
technology, McAfee.com.

“We
were able to plan for the changes in capacity and bandwidth necessary for the
remaining days in which the virus was still present, allowing us to continue
to bring our customers top-notch service,” Cavit added.