any case studies on how rapidshare etc. serve that much content/bandwidth?

Question

Would be interesting to read how these giant file serving type sites like rapidshare, yfrog, etc., serve up all that data.

Has anyone read anything about them before?

Answer 1

1. Sign hosting contract with colo of your choice.
2. Purchase rack of servers and network gear.
3. Sign up for a decent internet circuit.
4. Find thousands of advertisers.
5. Profit!

Seriously, though, there's nothing "magic" about what they're doing. They're a content provider just like thousands of other companies/websites out there.

Answer 2

Also, the second tier of traffic heavy sites will often use the services of big CDNs, eg akamai, level3, cdnetworks.