Delivering the Internet

Tom Leighton PhD ’81, faculty
Daniel Lewin SM ’98

In the 1990s, Leighton, an expert on parallel algorithms and architecture, was challenged by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee to address Internet congestion. With graduate student Lewin and several other top researchers, he developed a system of distributed servers to handle the dynamic routing of content. In 1998, the two cofounded Akamai Technologies, which today delivers nearly 3 trillion daily Internet interactions.