I just chatted with Adam from Dailysonic. It seems the issue has gone away. Lets hope that it doesn’t resurface because it had the potential to really muck around with their distribution model.

As it turns out, after a little more investigation on my side, the caching was definitely done by Akamai. But, it was being done for Apple. I know this because the request just prior to an Akamai server shoveling the packets my way was to Apple’s Phobos servers. The server farm that handles their iTunes service. So the guys were right. Apple, indirectly, was caching their feed.

They are yet to find out why, but have a question pending with Apple. My favorite theory at the moment is that they cache the popular shows, because if a user gets met with a timeout due to bandwidth issues on the part of the host, then the Apple iTunes application is seen as the problem. Although it’s a smart PR exercise by the company, it could impact podcasters who rely on detailed statistics for their shows. An alternative is that it was just a big mix up that wasn’t meant to occur. Hopefully the Dailysonic crew will get a clear answer.

Interestingly, Adam Curry did mention that Apple was using Akamai for the iTunes podcasts. It’ll just be interesting to hear what exactly it’s being used for. Is it only the shows controlled by Apple, or all the popular ones, or random.

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