When comparing Akamai vs Red, the Slant community recommends Akamai for most people. In the question“What are the best cloud-based image processing services?” Akamai is ranked 2nd while Red is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Akamai is:
Being one of the worlds largest CDNs, Akamai's large scale gives it a huge point of presence (PoP) to handle volumetric attacks.
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Pros
Pro Large scale point of presence
Being one of the worlds largest CDNs, Akamai's large scale gives it a huge point of presence (PoP) to handle volumetric attacks.
Pro Deeply customizable rules
The Kona Site Defender rules are all customizable, with continuous updates from Akamai. This means you can see how they are protecting your site under the hood, and adjust them to your needs.
Pro Lots of dedicated bandwidth specifically for DDoS absorption
Through Prolexic's PLXedge, Akamai provides their customers with a total of 2.3 Tbps of dedicated DDoS absorption bandwidth.
Pro Rules for rate limiting
Akamai provides tools for rate controlling traffic segments based on their request rate behavior.
Pro Capped bursting fees
If a sudden attack sucks up a lot of bandwidth, the bandwidth costs are capped.
Pro Application layer protection
Akamai utilizes a proprietary web application firewall in order to provide scalable protection against application layer attacks.
Pro Simple toolchain
Other languages have complex, multi-step setups that beginners often get stuck on. Red has no installer, no setup, no dependencies*, just a single small (~1MB) command-line executable with both the compiler and repl. On Windows, you don't even have to launch executable from the command line--it has a GUI-console.
Pro Very simple syntax
Red syntax is a lot like Rebol. It's easier than most languages for beginners to pick up.
Pro Both low and high-level
Red has low enough access to do systems programming, but it's expressive enough for high-level scripting.
Pro Low cognitive load
Red has very simple syntax that's easy to learn. It gets out of your way and lets you think about the problem instead, enhancing productivity.
Cons
Con Expensive
Akami's services cost more than triple comparative packages from other security companies. At 13k a month for DDoS protection, there are many other choices out there that cost less for the same protection.
Con Slower security rule propagation
Because of Akamai's large CDN structure, it can take some time for security rules to propagate, making it harder to adjust security responses on the fly.
Con Not production ready
Red is still under development and not considered stable.
Con Still in beta
It mostly works. It's good enough for building usable applications, but some planned features are missing.