I typically don’t like writing posts like this, but today I’m compelled to write this post about Limelight Networks in hopes to enlighten other people of Digital Trends’ horrible and ongoing experience with them.
When we decided to start creating our own videos, we decided to use Limelight Networks for our streaming service provider. Their rates were extremely competitive, their staff seemed knowledgeable and they offered Flash 8 and Windows Media streaming.
However, we always seemed to experience random buffering issues with both Windows Media and Flash. We first thought it was just our network at the office, but we started getting reports from users of the site from all over the US, Canada and other parts of the world.
We would submit tickets, but the issue always seemed to “resolve” themselves before tech support could really dig in.
Then November of 2006 happened. Our streams went down for over 3 weeks. I spent much of my own time working with a dedicated support technician at LimeLight Networks not only during the day, but into the evenings and into the early mornings helping them debug the issue.
You would think 3 weeks of network outage would bring up red flags, and they did. But what really got me worried was when a tech support technician told me they only had 2 windows certified technicians. Finding out that they had a hardware firewall AND the old piece of crap Microsoft firewall running on the servers didn’t help. Nor did the fact that because of the Microsoft firewall, requests coming in wound being re-requested by the server two or three times, in essence doubling and tripling our bandwidth usage.
Not only that, but at the same time there were apparently huge issues with AT&T upstream, and we were the only client complaining, but all windows media clients were effected.
Despite these huge issues, no matter how real or not they were, our videos finally began streaming again. However, in the bill for that month, we got billed triple our normal rate (see above for the reason). We never paid it and contested it immediately. The technicians backed me up, and the whole month of November was supposed to be credited back (removed from the bill) along with the half the month of October due to the double/triple bandwidth issue.
It is now July of 2007, and guess what? We are still waiting for the credit. It’s unbelievable. In fact, the previous Director of Client Services at Limelight thought it was unbelievable that we hadn’t been credited. He expressed it every time I called, which happened to be every month when I got the bill. I told him each time we aren’t paying anything including valid charged until we get the credit, which he agreed was completely acceptable. Calling the single billing person (you heard that right, their whole billing department is one poor guy…) results in the same thing every time; being told that the credit has been approved and they are just waiting for it to make it through the system. What type of system is Limelight using? The snail in my backyard moves faster!
We ended up leaving Limelight networks about 4 months ago, and we haven’t looked back. We are now using Internap for our needs. They have their own issues, but we’ve never had any problems with buffering or the servers going down completely. The price is right, and we are happy with them.
I recommend that if you are looking to for a CDN (content delivery network) and have Limelight on your list to take into consideration our experience with them. If you have any questions please feel free to send them to Digital Trends’ feedback form.
As for us, we’ll move on. I’m just thankful we never paid the overage bill with the hopes of getting future credit, because it would have never happened.