Anyone out there using Netskrt CDN? I mean, installed in your network for content delivery to your customers. I understand Netskrt provides caching for some well known online video streaming services... just wondering if there are any network operators that have worked with Netskrt and deployed their caching servers in your networks and what have you thought about it? What Internet uplink savings are you seeing?
Netskrt - https://www.netskrt.io/
That name rang a bell so I looked up my emails.
They contacted me last year, they were claiming to be “working with some of the major streaming brands, such as Amazon Prime Video, to improve the quality of both VOD and live streaming while also reducing the load on ISP networks such as your own.”.
Based on my quick research, they have a few registered ASNs (their peeringdb page) with a few netblocks but I get 0 traffic from them (we’re a sizable eyeball network). Their origin network might still not be ready but digging a little bit more, it seems they act as a third-party video caching solution and not as an origin CDN so in the end, they’re really just trying to sell ISPs and other types of customers their caching solutions.
Eric
Thanks… they told me it was free.
-Aaron
The website says they are part of the Streaming Video Technology Alliance.
I wonder if this is a prepackaged Open Cache box.
We also don’t appear to have had any traffic from them. Not much on the peeringdb for the USA ASN either.
BGP.tools shows they have upstreams with each ASN, and are on Ohio IX with AS53471, but not really any peers anywhere. Looks like Cogent and Zayo for upstreams and only peer I see is AS1239 (Sprint Wireline (Cogent))
John Stitt
Thanks … that svta caching sounds interesting. i watched the presentation, but don’t understand how it’s used by ISP’s that want to benefit from it.
-Aaron
Right now, Amazon Prime is sponsoring the deployment of the caches. They deploy in your network and requests from your IPs (v4 or v6) are redirected to your on-net caches. For on-demand content, it’s loaded nightly (as best they can predict) and for live (like TNF), it’s a one-to-many HLS media server for participating content.
I have some on my network. I don’t think they populate content from their own cdn network, but it comes from Amazon. interestingly for the NFL super bowl, while paramount+ streamed the game, on Amazon Prime Video you could “Watch super bowl on paramount+ Via Prime.”. that did actually drive users to using the netskrt caches.
They seem to work OK. TNF in 6 months will tell us more. 
It’s free.
I’ve had my dual-100g-connected Amazon ACEv2 caches for over a year now. With my ~55,000 subs I saw every Thursday night for NFL/TNF usage at 15 gbps X2 (so 30 gbps total) and one day in late November (thanksgiving probably) I saw 25 gbps x2 (so 50 gbps) usage!
-Aaron
They are not a CDN themselves, they partner with CDNs etc, and focusing on live video streams. For FREE, you will peer with their device and they will send you one prefix. That prefix will be used by CDNs if they have provisioned your IPs with NetSkrt. Live streaming video will be grabbed from Amazon and delvered to the NetSkrt appliance once, and then all other streams within your netblock will be directed to that single IP on the NetSkrt device, therefore, you receive one stream from the internet, and the rest of the network will get that same stream from that box.
Again, I have several customers doing this, seeing that its FREE, all you have to do is give them information on the /30 that you will assign it, your BGP peering information and that’s about it. Very simple. Honestly, unless you have something that will deliver that transit, its really a no brainer to just install it and let it run. As more services opt to use them, they will have more fill time as well though…
Dennis
I have been trying to get _away_ from caching appliances on our network — other than Google, we are able to pick up most of the stuff that otherwise would be cacheable via private peering; so it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for us to have appliances in the datacenter taking up space, power, and 100G ports, and increasing potential attack surface by having devices that we cannot control directly connected to edge routers.
Agreed ... it generally doesn't make sense to install caches where the content is just a few racks over.
But if you have a network that serves smaller population centers where CDNs are sparse or non-existent, then it gets the content closer to the eyeballs and saves considerably on transport bandwidth back to "civilization."
I suppose that depends on the size (bits and miles) of the network and the cost of transport within it. In many areas, space + power + port is cheaper than transport.
Yeah, to date I haven’t been in a place where peering is a reality, yet. CDN providers sending servers to us has been our best option.
Aaron
I get that. We were in the same boat here in Houston up until getting space at Databank HOU2. Since all of the big content networks have presence there, only made sense. We were looking at all of the caching options available prior to doing that, however… and we’ll likely have to keep our Google stuff until either we go to D-FW, or Google comes to Houston.