Hi Leo, My Zone Alarm is constantly blocking "a1255.g.akamai". I did a Google on it but didn't find out much. Can you tell me what it is?
I had to make an assumption or two, but a few steps lead me to an answer that I think is correct.
What I can't explain is why Zone Alarm is blocking it.
Let me walk you through what I did. The steps may be useful in researching other domain issues in the future.
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First off, I have to assume you really mean "a1255.g.akamai.net". Here's why I say that:
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"a1255.g.akamai" is an invalid domain name, simply because ".akamai" is an invalid top level domain (TLD). Top level domains are things like ".com", ".net", or country codes like ".ca", ".nl" and so on.
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My first guess, "a1255.g.akamai.com" doesn't resolve. If, in a command prompt, I attempt to:
ping a1255.g.akamai.com
I get the error message "Ping request could not find host a1255.g.akamai.com. Please check the name and try again."
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My second guess, "a1255.g.akamai.net", resolved properly. The ping command responded with actual ping results.
So now, armed with a working domain name, I attempted to find out who owns the "second level" domain, "akamai.net".
My first attempt is to use a "Whois" service to look up the owner of the domain. I typically start with betterwhois.com, which in this case tells me that the registrar (not the owner) is Tucows.com, and that I need to visit them to get more details.
I visit Tucows domain help site which includes their whois look-up. Entering "akamai.net" tells me what I wanted to know: the owner is a company called, not surprisingly, "Akamai Technologies".
So that didn't help much, did it? We still don't know what Akamai does.
To me that means it's time for Google. Searching on "akamai" returns not only the company home page (akamai.com), but also an interesting Wikipedia article on Akamai. In there we learn that "Akamai Technologies ... provides, among other services, global Internet content caching." And in one of the references cited in that article, "Theory of how Akamai works", we learn that there's actually a structure to the domain name - the "a1255" and the "g" probably mean something specific - though we're not quite sure what.
So what's all that mean? What's this "Internet content caching" thing?
To grossly oversimplify, it's a form of web hosting that "spreads the load" across other servers. For example, a business might use akamai to host all of it's images, so as to reduce load on their own servers. The akamai servers might optimize for providing images, and only images, very quickly. For busy sites, this type of load balancing, or more correctly, load spreading, allows several computers, servers and infrastructure to cooperate in such a way as to present web pages as quickly as possible.
While I'm not as busy as sites that use akamai, I use a similar technique here at Ask Leo! If you download any of my podcasts, while the URL you initially see begins with "http://ask-leo.com/podcasts/...", that's redirected, and the actual download occurs from a completely different server: "http://media.pugetsoundsoftware.com/ask-leo.com/podcasts/...". This actually distributes the bandwidth of the larger MP3 downloads to a completely different server. That "media" server is acting in many ways like the Akamai service we've just discussed.
Now... why is Zone Alarm tripping on it? I have no idea. You didn't say whether the block was outgoing or incoming. I can't envision a reason for an incoming connection from an akamai server, so blocking that makes sense. But my assumption is that you're seeing an outgoing block. Since so many companies use Akamai services I'm not sure at all why that might be blocked, unless the specific customer represented by "a1255.g" is something or someone that Zone Alarm has determined may be harmful.
I'd be tempted to follow that question through with Zone Alarm.
Related:
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Tucows - domain help
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Wikipedia - Akamai
Article C2655 - May 15, 2006
Here is a solution I use with Firefox - http://noscript.net/ Here is what is written on their site:
"The NoScript Firefox extension provides extra protection for Firefox, Flock, Seamonkey and others mozilla-based browsers: this free, open source add-on allows JavaScript and Java execution only for trusted domains of your choice"
Here is an article by PC World as noscript is one of the 100 Best Products of last year - 2006
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,123771-page,1/article.html
The PC World Top 100 list is here:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,125706-page,14-c,technology/article.html
2007's top 100 list is here:
Posted by: R. Vail at December 12, 2007 7:19 PMhttp://www.pcworld.com/article/id,131935-page,14-c,systems/article.html
Hope this helps ;)
Little Google search and wikipedia, should have been enough.
Posted by: Dee Dee at December 31, 2007 12:33 PMakamai is a site that keeps track of number of users, and other information, for sites like yahoo and et al.
And Dr, FYI companies like Yahoo, do need to keep track of number of hits.
akamai uses your information in all the above ways and may mix it up to further confuse you. It uses gif files which are really tracking devices like cookies along with providing it's cache service. It is most likely being watched by Big Brother through a statistic service and it will at times serve to gather some personal data if it can. And to JoeSA, they care a lot and clearing your cookies means nothing as the data mining is done whenever the page is refreshed through clicking a link or navigating. I have account with Yahoo and MS and why should I care if they make a statistic out of me? Well I'm not their number or a product of there dollar and I'm not a lab monkey.
Posted by: no follow at March 14, 2008 10:06 AMIt is!!! a from of spying and I have set my fire wall to block out akamai.net I noticed using System Internal`s TCP viewer that this pararsite akamai was leeching along with my browsing using port # 80, like typical spy ware does connecting to
Posted by: Bernhard at May 19, 2008 10:06 PMIP 72.246.51.XXX and if you blocked out a specific number XXX it would just resort to another one. So I blocked the entire range from
0 to 255. Now my browsing is A LOT QUICKER!
Is it not enough that every time you log into a
website NARUS along with programs like "Magic Lantern" and "Carnivore" steel your User Names and
Passwords, while "Triangle Boy" gets your real name and address from your ISP?....Why would you even begin to tolerate Jerks like "Akamai" who as the name implies think they are smarter than you!
Disable cookies, disable images, disable javascript, use Mozilla, or Firefox, and the addons NoScript, and AdBlock. No more garbage, no more spyware, no more bullshit.
And yes you can still access websites without akamai's garbage. So what if a few images don't show, I have them disabled anyway and can navigate yahoo's mail and other sites just fine.
NoScript only needs to allow mail.yahoo.com and mail.yimg.com to have mail work for yahoo. And only session cookies turned on for the same root names as for AdBlock.
Get a clue people.
Posted by: nunyabizniz at July 11, 2008 4:28 PMI have PCcillin. How do I block the akamai ip range.
Posted by: Carolyn at November 10, 2008 6:52 PM72.246.51.0-255. As you said .net only partially.
The main problem with "services" supplied by Akamai.net (and others) is that there are a lot of phishing sites hosted on it, particularly of the "update/re-activate your on-line banking" type.
Posted by: Steve Georgii at January 29, 2009 3:35 AMBeing charitable, I like to think that they do not have the resources necessary to monitor exactly what all sites they host are doing in detail. On the other hand, they do make money out of hosting (and selling user data).
The best recourse is to report any problem users to Akamai.net. Either they will deal with the situation out of moral indignation, or eventually because the number of complaints will block their systems.
To most of the comments about 'spy' stuff is really incorrect. Symantec (norton) uses akamai.net to do exactly what the articles desribe for its live update services.
As for the paranoia I suggest removing zone alarm because the average comptuer user does not have the knowledge to properly administer it and get concerned about things that done matter.
For the comments about syping etc. . please disregard them, its comming from people who spend too much time on the internet and watching tv.
R (Formerly with the CIA Computer Spy Network)
Posted by: Robert at April 1, 2009 3:30 AMI was curious about the akamai connections too. Taking a cue from Robert's post (4/01), I confirmed that at least on my computer, it is Norton's update service.
Click on 'run live update' on Norton & see if your firewall makes connections to Akamai ip addresses - mine were 96.17.107.32, 96.6.245.153 thru port 80. When I shut down Norton's auto-update, so did the Akamai connections.
Posted by: Anne at April 11, 2009 12:00 AMi want to copy a EBAY PAGE [MY CONTENT] into Word,
Posted by: JEFF at June 23, 2009 12:47 PMand Word hangs (with 96.17.111.33 displayed as 'process-subject'?),2nd try. A web-search of 96.17.111.33 names' 'akamai.net'; tritch, or what? This terminal only uses I.E.phisher,pop-up,Protectd.mode'.norton,mcafee, scans--too like fruitfly.