Getting faster Internet speed usually involves spending more money on bigger bandwidth. But the innovators at Network Platforms, one of South Africa’s leading ISPs, have come up with a solution that gives users better bandwidth at no extra cost.
As Network Platforms MD Bradley Love explains, “We are leveraging the power of peering to give our users faster access to international content. To do this we’re using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to store data locally, which improves bandwidth performance.
“Instead of downloading content over international links where latency is higher, content is stored locally and delivered over local connections. By cutting out the distance factor users get their content faster because it’s coming from local servers, avoiding the congestion of international links.”
To achieve this effect, Network Platforms has partnered with Akamai Technologies, a leading cloud platform for media and content delivery, application performance and Web security. The Akamai infrastructure provides access to key content from global providers, as well as an SSL certificate node to ensure secure transactions between web servers and browsers.
The Akamai node and infrastructure used by Network Platforms has been set up at Teraco’s NAPAfrica peering point in Johannesburg, one of Network Platforms’ main peering locations. Peering is a means whereby Internet service providers transfer Internet traffic between their respective networks in an optimal manner, and NAPAfrica provides this service free of charge.
NAPAfrica is Africa’s largest content distribution hub. The company plugs into more than 30 network providers, ranging from last-mile providers to ISPs and mobile data providers. It also boasts a growing ecosystem of content companies and content delivery services, all accessible via one direct connection. These factors have enabled it to become Africa’s fastest growing peering and traffic exchange.
Says Love, “South Africa’s Internet users don’t have to envy the super-fast download speeds of their international peers any longer. NAPAfrica hosts a plethora of international content providers so end users can view video content without endless buffering, access international gaming platforms with a substantially quicker response and download software in a fraction of the time it took in the past.”
