Apple Dramatically Expanding Capacity Of Its CDN Network
From ISPs I have spoken with, they tell me Apple has put a massive amount of capacity in place, with many saying that Apple has more than 10x the capacity they are using today, all ready to go.
Based on my calculations, Apple has already put in place multiple terabits per second of capacity and by the end of this year, will have invested well more than $100M in their CDN build out.
I don’t believe Apple expands capacity by an order of magnitude merely for future-proofing reasons. Adjustments to user growth happen gradually, not in one burst. My guess would be that this is for video content tied in with some new Apple TV (or iTunes Movies) initiative. Bitrates for high-definition video content are high enough to explain such increases in CDN bandwidth potential.