Has anyone tried CDN cloud serving for their podcasts?

Question

Is anyone using Akamai or Highwinds Content Distribution Network for their podcast files? I'm thinking of using 'Origin Pull' where they take the first request for the file at your site and store it 'in the cloud' then all subsequent requests are served from the cloud.
I was wondering if anyone has tried this and if there were any complications with it?

Answer 1

I can't answer you specifically on this, but I've seen cases where odd redirect or content management URLs broke the Store, which is much more touchy than a browser.
If the URL the Store has is directly to the file, and the method you describe takes place in the background, it would likely be OK; but if some sort of odd URL is used then it's risky. Unless someone happens to have done exactly this already I can only suggest either making a new podcast and trying it (make it look convincing - it the Store thinks it's a test it will be rejected -you can always get it removed afterwards); or possibly you could post just one episode done in this way; if it doesn't work you would only need to modify the URL back to a normal one.
The first method would test whether it works for the feed as well as the media, the second only for the media. Note that if you want to use this to count downloads it's probably useless with the feed, since the iTunes application checks subscribed feeds periodically - I don't know whether checking but not actually downloading would count or not.