What do you think the number one source of traffic is on the Internet today? E-Mail? Not even close. Conventional Web sites? Not way! Porn!? No, believe it or not, it’s not that either. The single biggest source of traffic on today’s Internet is Netflix. Its videos, and those of other video sites, require their users to have not only very fast Internet connections, but fast and accurate pointers to the closest and fastest Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) sites. That’s where Google, OpenDNS, and some of CDNs hope to improve things with the Global Internet Speedup initiative, a worldwide effort to improve Internet speeds and enable faster access to information.
According to this new Internet consortium, “The Global Internet Speedup enhances the way communication within the Domain Name System (DNS) is handled. The Internet has evolved from simple text-based pages to bandwidth intensive services such as video streaming, real-time communications and rich social networking that have become indispensable parts of our everyday lives. The DNS plays a critical role in delivering content fast, acting as one of the first pieces of the routing infrastructure that helps users get to content quickly and is the cornerstone for every major CDN. CDNs and other large Internet services typically direct the user to the nearest content server based on the location of the user’s DNS server rather than the location of the user themselves. This routing may result in slower Web page load times and decreased Internet performance if a user is not located near their DNS server.”