Found this somewhat old post on Peerblock forums. You can block Akamai domains to help speed up your internet connection on certain websites. I tried, but I only noticed a 1-2ms difference, but I guess slower connections will notice more of a difference. Check it out here: http://forums.peerblock.com/read.php?8,17186
Be sure to look at the last post there for a more complete list.
You'll end up breaking some sites, especially things like antivirus which use them.
It looks like you can't block akamai.com with the host file, no matter how I try to block it. I think MS has a exclusion for this domain that prevents you from blocking it with the HOST file. I wonder if the other domains, which I think most of them are spiders, have the same problem.
Because blocking it will break allot.
Well I have them in my host file for about a month now and nothing has been broken to me, so far.
Anyways, use them if you want, I only wanted to share in case anyone wanted to give a little boost to their networking.
Back when I used 2-way firewalls I was always noticing them in the firewall logs. They aren't something I'm about to block. Many years ago on another forum there was discussion about blocking them due to them showing up in firewall logs, the consensus was don't block them because so much relied upon them.