Microsoft to use Akamai to prevent outages...
  01/29/2001 1:23:00pm MST Albuquerque, Nm
  By Dustin D. Brand; Owner AMO

Akamai will provide 2 backup Microsoft Directories   Microsoft announced today that Akamai Technologies, Inc will provide 2 backup directories for Microsoft. This announcement comes after last weeks Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday's Microsoft Web-Family outages. This move is positioned to prevent such Denial of Service and the dreaded Single Point Of Failure that prevents redundancy. Akamai which provides delivery of web-site content for companies such as Yahoo helps reduce the strain on Web-Sites by having certain content be loaded from their Data Center.

  In this case however, Akamai will provide backup directories of Microsoft, not to handle traffic load which Microsoft doesn't need, but to provide redundancy. Microsoft is also in the process of redesigning their DNS infrastructure to bring the total points of failure from 1 to nearly 10. Last weeks 48+ hour outage of Microsoft according to Microsoft was caused both by one of their Technicians improperly configuring a Router for their DNS system, and also a Denial Of Service attack which Microsoft has contacted the FBI to help investigate.

  Microsoft is DOWN! (part 1)
  Microsoft is DOWN! (part 2)
  Microsoft's response.