A Strange Conversation with LimeLight Networks

If nothing else, our videos have increased the number of phone conversations we have with seemingly random people. We recently had a rather bizarre conversation with Limelight Networks that still makes me chuckle.

First, a bit about Limelight. They own a network that enables them to handle/distribute huge amounts of information on the Internet - videos, audio, rich media, etc. They provide a backbone for delivering media on the Web.

They contacted us because we're making videos. Our rep "Carl" was friendly and well-spoken, but didn't seem to realize our position, or the position of thousands of publishers like us.

Example: In order to give me a quote, he asked about our monthly bandwidth usage. I said it was negligible, which surprised him. I explained that we don't host our own videos - we use sites like Blip.tv and YouTube.

We then proceeded to calculate, for some unknown reason, how much of Blip.tv's bandwidth we're using a month. It was about 80 gigs a month for June. I had no idea.

According to our new friend Carl, we could use Limelight instead of Blip for only about $1000/month. That's right - $1000 per month vs. a free Blip.tv account. Hmm. What to do?

Thanks for the call and the quote Carl, but I think we're on the right track for a while. I suppose this goes to show how young this industry is.

This article by Jon Udell cleared up some of the unanswered questions I had about bandwidth usage.