A sophisticated DDoS IMO would consist of an attacker more......sophisticated. HA!
J/K. It is probably a safe bet that Akamai had NIDS, and probably CIDS hardware. As you probably well know one way an IDS detects an attack is by signatures. If The attacker could get 1000's of computers to attack Akamai's network and he/she could manage to sneak these crafted packets in with out the IDS flippin out...I'd say thats sophisticated. Shutting down a band as large as Akamai's would not be easy. Even for two hours. It is probably also safe to assume that Akamai has a very, very tight security policy. After how many times yahoo, MS's sites have been taken down before, defaced, whatever, you'd think that they would have learned and have 90% of there bases covered. In short no script kiddie did this, as with most DoS. Most DoS are performed by kids who barely grasp what a packet is let alone try and perform a large attack such as this. I am not saying whoever did this was a genius. But it is probably safe to say they did there homework, and they did it well.