Akamai - Using ESN, or Akamai's Edge Staging Network

How do I test using Akamai's Staging Network?

Akamai's Staging Network allows Akamai's customers to test configuration changes prior to going live on the Production Network. How exactly does one test from Staging?

Testing involves two steps: first, find a Staging IP, and second, spoof your domain to this IP and test whether or not your site or application behaves as expected.

1) Here is how you find an Akamai Staging IP. Say, Akamai is serving your digital property www.foo.com. Typically, this digital property would be cnamed to an Edge Hostname such as www.foo.com.edgesuite.net or www.foo.com.edgekey.net.

(Note, if this is a new property that has not been Akamaized yet, this cname may not be in place yet. In this case, you will have to create an Edge Hostname to which you will be cnaming prior to running this test.)

$ dig www.foo.com
;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.foo.com. 7200 IN CNAME www.foo.com.edgesuite.net.
www.foo.com.edgesuite.net. 1359 IN CNAME a1234.g.akamai.net.

To find a Staging IP, add "-staging" to your Edge Hostname as follows:

www.foo.com.edgesuite-staging.net or www.foo.com.edgekey-staging.net

Resolve the newly obtained hostname to find a Staging IP.

$ dig www.foo.com.edgesuite-staging.net
;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.foo.com.edgesuite-staging.net. 1264 IN CNAME a1234.g.akamai-staging.net.
a1234.g.akamai-staging.net. 20 IN A 165.254.92.146
a1234.g.akamai-staging.net. 20 IN A 165.254.92.138

The "-staging" Edge Hostnames are created automatically when the Production Edge Hostnames "www.foo.com.edgesuite.net" or "www.foo.com.edgekey.net" are created. As with production Edge Hostname, the "-staging" Edge Hostnames resolve to optimal Staging IPs.

2) Once you have found a Staging IP, spoof www.foo.com to this IP and test your site or application as you would in Production. You can spoof by entering this domain and IP in your hosts file, or use testing tools such as curl, wfetch, or Akamai's homegrown tool EdgeSuite Booster available to download under Tools on the Luna Control Center.

Testing on Staging is strongly recommended when you make your own changes to your configuration. It is required when a change is implemented by Akamai.