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What is Twitter?If you've noticed a "netsession" process running on your Mac then there's a simple explanation for it, especially if you're a Netflix user. Like many video-on-demand websites, Netflix uses Akamai NetSession to ensure that streaming of movies is smooth and reliable. This effectively means that your Mac's resources are being used in a P2P network to deliver high quality video content. Some users may or may not be entirely comfortable with this.
Akamai has servers around the world and content is delivered to you by the closest one to where you are. In addition to this though, Akamai NetSession uses P2P technology to deliver content from other users watching the same content as you in order to spread the data burden.
NetSession isn't supposed to consume many physical resources and Akamei claim that it poses no security risks:
The Akamai NetSession Interface captures and stores about the same information as a standard web server. The Akamai NetSession Interface is made up of various networking protocols designed to manage the distribution of files over IP networks and is solely used for that function. And just to be clear: The Akamai NetSession Interface is networking software only. Absolutely zero personal information is *ever* captured, shared or stored via the Akamai NetSession Interface.
However, even if you're not a Netflix user, it's possible that NetSession has been installed onto your Mac via an Adobe installer. Adobe uses Akamei Download Manager to deliver large software downloads and it uses NetSession to do this.
The other thing to be aware of is that NetSession may also show-up under a different process name on your Mac such as "rsmac" followed by a number - see a discussion here on this.
If you don't want any Akamei related products on your Mac, go to "/Applications/Akamai/" and simply delete the folder. If that doesn't work, there are two alternative removal methods suggested by Akamai:
Macintosh Alternative Uninstall
Go to the command line of your computer. In the Application -> Utilities folder, double-left click Terminal. Go to the Akamai NetSession Interface installation folder, which is normally /Applications/Akamai/ Type the command AdminTool uninstall -force Press the Enter (Return) key to complete the command.
Alternative Method Using Launch Unload This alternative method may be used, for example, if you deleted AdminTool without running the AdminTool uninstall steps described just above. This uninstall involves required steps of manually stopping the client, then removing the installation directory, the automatic startup script, and the preferences panel.
Go to the command line of your computer. In the Application -> Utilities folder, double-left click Terminal. Go to the Akamai NetSession Interface installation folder, which is normally /Applications/Akamai/. Type the following lines, and after typing each line, press the Enter (Return) key to complete the command: launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.akamai.client.plist rm -rf /Applications/Akamai rm -rf ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.akamai.client.plist rm -rf ~/Library/PreferencePanes/AkamaiNetSession.prefPane If the NetSession client isn't stopped when you have gone through these steps, restart your computer to complete the operation.
If you're just unsure about whether to allow Akamai NetSession to run, read the detailed description about exactly what it does on Akamei's website.
Dude,
Great article, thanks for sharing the insight!
I had some interaction with the NetSession support folks so I have a better idea how this thing works now.
Some points: 1) I believe by default NetSession does not use P2P (it is up to the company using it (like Adobe) to enable it, from what I read in the Adobe forums, they do not use the P2P functionality.
2) I would not recommend uninstalling it because many big companies are using the software so you would need to download the SW install/uninstall each time (too much work)
3) There is a control panel icon in Windows and System preferences in MAC that is very useful since it tells you all the software downloaded using this Download Manager and allows you to turn off P2P if you like (I am not 100% sure but turning off P2P may slow down download of software that is optimize for P2P)
@Ja Gar, Thanks for the clarifications. It's an important point that Akamei does not actually conduct P2P file sharing on your Mac but rather it is the vendors (such as Netflix and Adobe) that do. However, it's something that should probably be made clearer to users when they download it and at least give them the option to activate or deactivate the P2P capability. Obviously, deactivating it would probably mean that Netflix is almost unwatchable or that Adobe software downloads are painfully slow so it's a bit of a Catch 22. As you say, this is an option in preferences though although not one that is highlighted when you install it.