Akamai Integration

Caveat: each of the following integration directions was based on the UI when it was written. The UIs may change by the time you read this, so UI updates are beyond the scope of these articles. Please go to the integration target sites for their latest information on integration directions.

Akamai

By monitoring the relationship between response times and actual traffic pushed through Akamai over time, you can better understand your environment and more easily troubleshoot problems as they arise.

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Akamai Integration Features

Introduction

Akamai is one of the world’s largest content delivery networks (CDN). Apica is an Akamai Partner and offers full API Integration for CDN Traffic information from Akamai - Luna Control.

There is also support for enabling Akamai pragma headers for Synthetic Monitoring checks, meaning tracing and troubleshooting sites that use Akamai is even easier.

This allows you to dive deeper into the results of each request, determine if URLs are being cached and pinpoint the root cause of poor response times.

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Sample views:

Integration Dashboard

Check Results

Setting up Akamai

Setup

Setting the Akamai integration up for your Synthetic Monitoring account requires Akamai account credentials.

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Item	Description
Username	Akamai username.
Password	Akamai password.
Available Akamai Services	Akamai Services that are enabled for the account.

Buttons

Button	Action	Description
	Save	Store the changes.
	Cancel	Stop editing and ignore all changes.
	Dashboard	Open the Akamai Dashboard.

Step-by-Step Akamai Integration

Akamai Setup

Setting up the Akamai integration is mostly a matter of allowing Synthetic Monitorings to access your Akamai account.

Note: Using Akamai integration requires an active Akamai account.

Setup

To set up the Akamai integration:

• Click Setup Akamai

• Enter your User name (email)

• Enter your Password

• Click Save

The integration is set up.

Akamai Dashboard

Akamai Dashboard

The Akamai Dashboard shows information about data collected from the Akamai account.

Each available service is shown in a separate tab.

For details about the provided data, see the https://www.akamai.com documentation for the services you are using.

Debugging With Akamai Headers

Headers

Akamai provides debug data for content hosted by their CDN service. This data is useful when trying to assess issues with Akamai services.

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When provided with the appropriate request headers through a check, Akamai servers can provide debug information about objects through the HTTP response headers.

The debug headers are displayed in the expanded Waterfall view.

Akamai Pragma Request Headers

Request

The response headers are displayed on the left in the expanded Waterfall view.

Request Headers

Header	Description
akama-xi-get-extracted-values
akamai-x--meta-trace
akamai-x-cache-on	Returns information about how the response was served.
akamai-x-cache-remote-on	Returns information about how the parent served its response.
akamai-x-check-cacheable	Returns X-Check-Cacheable with the value of yes or no to indicate cacheable status.
akamai-x-get-cache-key	Returns the cache key used for the request. (Deprecated.)
akamai-x-get-extracted-values	Returns the values extracted from the request into variables.
akamai-x-get-nonces
akamai-x-get-request-id	Returns request-id used to identify request in the logs.
akamai-x-get-ssl-client-session-id
akamai-x-get-true-cache-key
akamai-x-request-trace
akamai-x-serial-no	Returns x-serial with the serial number used for the request.

Enable Akamai Pragma Headers

Enable

In order to retrieve the debug data, checks must provide the correct pragma headers.

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The settings for retrieving debug data are available in the check configuration, in the sections Integrations and Browser Data.

• Find the Integrations section

• Check Enable Akamai Pragma Headers

• Find the Browser Data section

• Check Store Request & Response Headers

The pragma headers are enabled for the check.

Headers Example

akamai-x-cache-on
akamai-x-cache-remote-on
akamai-x-check-cacheable
akamai-x-get-cache-key
akamai-x-get-extracted-values
akamai-x-get-nonces
akamai-x-get-ssl-client-session-id
akamai-x-get-true-cache-key
akamai-x-serial-no

Response Example

HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html
Etag: W/"26100-124692218130400"
Cache-Control: max-age=120
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:01:27 GMT
X-Cache: TCP_MEM_HIT from a69-174-50-208 (AkamaiGHost/5.7.2-5726413) (-)
X-Cache-Key: S/L/2649/75069/6h/www.example.com/common/global.html
X-True-Cache-Key: /L/www.example.com/common/global.html
X-Serial: 2649
Connection: keep-alive
Vary: Accept-Encoding
X-Check-Cacheable: YES

Akamai Responses to Pragma Headers

Response

The response headers are displayed on the right in the expanded Waterfall view.

Response Headers

Header	Description
X-Check-Cacheable	Shows if the URL can be cached on Akamai.
X-Akamai-Request-ID	Request ID provides a unique request identifier on the Akamai network. Value of this header can be used to trace a request on the Akamai network by a support representative.
X-Cache-Key	The value used to store content.
X-Cache	Cache information.

X-Check-Cacheable HTTP Response Header

The X-Check-Cacheable HTTP header may be inaccurate depending on what metadata is applied to the request and how the TTL is set up (configuration vs response headers).

The most accurate way to determine cache-ability of an object is to run multiple requests and check the status of the response on the X-Cache header.

More information is available at https://control.akamai.com/search/kb/5396 in the Akamai knowledgebase.

X-Cache-Key HTTP Response Header

The X-Cache-Key response header is deprecated. If used, it will return the Cache Key-value used to store content on Akamai network.

Example:

X-Cache-Key: /L/9/12345/1d/www.example.com/ index.html

The value before the URL (1d in the example) indicates the time setting for the cache (number and unit):

	Value	Meaning	Description
000	Non-cacheable.
0s	0-second cache.	Serve from cache but revalidate on every request.
10s	10 seconds.
45m	45 minutes.
8h	8 hours.
1d	1 day.	24 hours.

X-Cache HTTP Response Header

The X-Cache HTTP response header is returned for requests using Pragma: akamai-x-cache-on.

Response	Meaning
TCP_HIT	The object was fresh in cache and object from the disk cache.
TCP_MISS	The object was not in the cache, the server fetched the object from origin.
TCP_REFRESH_HIT	The object was stale in the cache and we successfully refreshed with the origin on an If-Modified-Since request.
TCP_REFRESH_MISS	The object was stale in the cache and refresh obtained a new object from the origin in response to our IF-Modified Since request.
TCP_REFRESH_FAIL_HIT	The object was stale in the cache and we failed on refresh (couldn't reach origin) so we served the stale object.
TCP_IMS_HIT	IF-Modified-Since request from client and object was fresh in the cache and served.
TCP_NEGATIVE_HIT	Object previously returned a “not found” (or any other negatively cacheable response) and that cached response was a hit for this new request.
TCP_MEM_HIT	The object was on disk and in the memory cache. Server served it without hitting the disk.
TCP_DENIED	Denied access to the client.
TCP_COOKIE_DENY	Denied access on cookie authentication (if centralized or decentralized authorization feature is being used in a configuration).