Akamai

World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee challenged MIT researchers in 1995 to find a better way to handle growing web congestion. Applied-mathematics professor Tom Leighton and graduate student Danny Lewin developed algorithms for distributed content delivery and incorporated Akamai in August 1998 with Jonathan Seelig and Randall Kaplan. Rather than build a larger central server, the early Akamai idea distributed copies of content across many servers and routed users to nearby capacity.