Many people may have been aware that, at some point in October, the Akamai Netsession Interface pinged thousands of computers worldwide continuously to allow access to update their software.  Unsure of what this would do, most of us (including myself) decided to play it safe and uninstall this software, in case Akamai’s program had been compromised by a virus.  But what most people didn’t know was, once the program was removed, people who required certain updates from Adobe or to download trials of Autodesk software could no longer do this!  Many of you trying to reinstall may have also discovered that you can’t do that either, citing a “Port 9421” error message no other program is actually using.

Since this incident occurred the company who makes it, as well any manufacturer who uses it as a downloader for their software, hasn’t been available for comment or even provided some much needed technical support to resolve the issue…

The question is, what to do about it now.  Since there are thousands of people who use Autodesk software, the fact that Akamai’s downloader is required to access software trials and some product upgrades mean that those people have been left out in the cold.  The purpose of this thread is to therefore ask the community about whether Autodesk should have their own, proprietary download manager that can be used to handle this process, as well as make it have greater transfer controls (such as pausing and resuming) and keep track of previous downloads.

Comments are welcome.