Akamai (AKAM) investors are finally getting a breather: Shares of the Internet content distribution firm are up 7% this morning -- trading around $30.25 -- after Piper Jaffray upgraded the stock to "buy" and Citigroup reissued its "buy" rating yesterday. Shares had tumbled 16% from Feb. 7, the day after Akamai posted stellar Q4 results, until yesterday's close.

Why buy Akamai? Piper analyst Aaron Kessler says, in a note summarized by Barron's editor Eric Savitz, that the company should have minimal impact from the slowing economy. Meanwhile, Kessler expects "volume bit growth" -- the amount of data Akamai customers push across its network -- to stay strong (and possibly speed up); pricing and gross margin declines to moderate this year; and that application acceleration -- different from Akamai's content delivery business -- will kick in a greater amount of revenue.

Kessler also loves Akamai's patent portfolio -- it recently won a patent suit against rival Limelight Networks (LLNW), currently in appeals -- and its valuation.

Meanwhile, Citi analyst John Reilly Walsh offers some explanations for Akamai's recent dip, also summarized by Savitz: Concerns about weak online ad and e-commerce business, highlighed by a recent comScore report showing anemic paid click growth at Google (GOOG), Akamai's exposure to auction-rate securities, and concerns about Q1.

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