16/03/2021 Content Delivery Network (CDN) Explained

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CDNs are a crucial part of any internet business
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Content Delivery Network Explained

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a globally distributed network of web servers or
Points of Presence (PoP) whose purpose is to provide faster content delivery. The content
is replicated and stored throughout the CDN so the user can access the data that is
stored at a location that is geographically closest to the user. This is di erent (and more
e cient) than the traditional method of storing content on just one, central server. A
client accesses a copy of the data near to the client, as opposed to all clients accessing
the same central server, in order to avoid bottlenecks near that server.

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Image Source

High content loading speed = positive User Experience. If all data is located on a central
server, the User Experience is negatively a ected by limited loading speed. The greater the
distance between two objects in communication (in this case, the user and the server),
the longer it takes for the content to reach any of these objects. To put it more simply,
the purpose of a CDN is to improve user experience and provide it with a more e cient
network resource utilization. Content providers such as media companies and e-commerce
vendors pay CDN operators to deliver their content to their audience, that is, end-users. In
turn, a CDN pays ISPs, carriers and network operators for hosting servers in their data
centers. There are two key mechanisms that explain how CDN functions:

1. Keep important content distributed to multiple, globally distributed data centers so

it is closer to end users, and thus faster to download.

2. Use server optimizations based on content type to get that content to the user
most e ciently.

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Other than better performance, CDNs also o load the tra c served directly from the
content provider’s origin infrastructure, resulting in possible cost savings for the content
provider. They are also e ective against DDoS attacks, since they provide their own large
distributed server infrastructure to absorb the volume of the attack, but we’ll explain that
later.

Location is key for content delivery speed. The farther the user is from the server where
the content is stored, the longer it will take for the content to reach the user, and this in
turn negatively a ects User Experience.

CDN Architecture and Key Components

Here’s a simple model of a Content Delivery Network, its key components and their roles
explained below:

Content Provider: the entity delivering the content

Authorization: the Content Provider gives the CDN Provider permission to deliver content

Reporting: the Content Provider demands performance analytics from the CDN Provider to
evaluate the quality of the CDN Provider’s service and have access to other relevant data

Source: the Content Provider sends a copy of the content

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Content: digital information created and/or licensed for distribution

Request: the user requests from the Content Provider to view or locally store data
(content)

Deliver: CDN delivers the content to the user

User: the entity requesting data (content) from the Content Provider

Most CDN architectures are designed using these key components:

Delivery Nodes: primary purpose is to deliver content to the end user. Delivery Nodes are
servers that contain caches running one or more content delivery applications. They are
typically located as close to the end user as possible. Content can be stored manually to
these nodes (Push CDNs), or delivery nodes can demand content from origin nodes based
on Cache Expiration Rules (Pull CDNs).The advantage of Push CDNs is that the content is
instantly available to the users demanding it. Its main disadvantage is that the Content
Provider has to proactively “push” content every time it is updated.The advantage of Pull
CDNs is they automatically demand content from the Content Provider. Its main
disadvantage is the initial content delivery speed: when the user demands content for the
rst time, the delivery speed will be the same as if the Content Provider didn’t use CDN.
After this initial request, though, all other users located in the same geographical location
or close to the original user who made the request will be able to access content instantly
because the content will be cached inside the Delivery Node.

Storage Nodes: primary purpose is storing copies of original data that is being distributed
to Delivery Nodes. Storage Nodes can be deployed in a hierarchical model to allow tiered
caching.

Origin Nodes: These are the main sources for content that enable content distribution
across the entire network or the content owner’s infrastructure.

Control Node: primary purpose is hosting of management, routing and monitoring

components of a CDN.

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A model of CDN architecture. Source: Richard Gibbs – A new approach to publishing and
caching video

Bene ts include reducing bandwidth costs, improving page load times, or increasing the
global availability of the content. The number of nodes and servers making up a CDN
varies, depending on the architecture, with some reaching thousands of nodes with ten
thousands of servers on many remote points of presence (PoPs). Others build a global
network and have a small number of geographical PoPs.

CDN nodes are usually deployed in multiple locations, often over multiple backbones.
Bene ts include reducing bandwidth costs, improving page load times, or increasing the
global availability of the content. The number of nodes and servers making up a CDN
varies, depending on the architecture, with some reaching thousands of nodes with ten
thousands of servers on many remote points of presence (PoPs). Others build a global
network and have a small number of geographical PoPs.

There are 3 primary types of content:

Dynamic content: content generated on the y by the web server using any of
several common web programming languages such as php, ruby or java

Static content: content that typically does not change very often and does not
require generation. Images, CSS, and JavaScript, etc.

Streaming content: videos or audio les that are played via a web browser control.

Tweet This: CDNs distribute content faster throughout globally placed datacenters so
it’s closer to end users

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Tweet this: Reading about #CDN key components: Delivery, Storage, Origin & Control
nodes

Tweet this: There are three types of content: Dynamic, Static & Streaming content

Web Performance Optimization Explained

A great user experience is everything when it comes to running a website. At one hand,
the user expectations are huge; the site should provide interactivity, media and info, but
on the other hand, the Internet is growing, making it harder and harder to provide a great
user-friendly website.

Image Source

When we think about website speed, we think about various ways to optimize the loading
speed of di erent elements, including webpages, pictures, videos, apps and other
elements the user saves to their computer or downloads through their Internet browser.
Having a website with a high loading speed results in:

Better User Experience

Having a better position in search engines

Higher conversion rates (the number of website visitors who turn to customers)

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The Importance of website speed optimization

We can prove the importance of website speed optimization by using ecommerce as an
example. In ecommerce, the number of sales is directly connected to the speed at which
website content is being delivered.

Akamai, currently the world’s largest CDN services provider, ran a research in 2017 that
went on to show that:

A 100 millisecond slower webpage loading speed can result with a 7% drop in sales

A 2 seconds slower webpage loading speed can almost double the number of visitors
who end up abandoning their carts

53% of users who use smartphones to visit web stores won’t make the sale if the
webpage takes more than 3 seconds to fully load

The optimal loading time that ensures the highest number of sales is between 1.8
and 2.7 seconds.

28% of users won’t return to the same web store if they think it takes too long to
load

The webpages that lead to the highest number of sales loaded 26% faster than
other webpages

A 250 millisecond faster loading time proved to keep users from visiting a competitor
web store

Performance has a direct impact on your website revenue, metrics in uence brand
perception, loyalty and visitor engagement.

According to eMarketer estimates, retail e-commerce sales reached $2.3 trillion in 2017, a
23.2 percent increase over the previous year. The mobile share of this stood at 58.9
percent, or $1.4 trillion. In 2021, mobile e-commerce could rake in some $3.5 trillion and then
make up almost three quarters (72.9 percent) of e-commerce sales.

Consider the patience of your customers; the majority of Americans are said to wait in line
(in a real shop) for no longer than 15 minutes. However, on the web, 1 out of 4 customers
will abandon a webpage that takes more than 4 seconds to load.

More data that proves the connection between website speed and number of sales:

Walmart increased its total sales number by 2% for every second in increased
webpage loading speed
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For every 400 milliseconds of increased webpage loading speed, Yahoo increased its
tra c by 9%

For every 100 milliseconds of increased webpage loading speed, Amazon increased
its total turnover by 1%

Shopzilla optimized its webpage loading speed from 6 seconds to 1.2 seconds. This
lead to 25% increase in total website tra c and a 12% higher revenue

This graph shows the correlation between loading speed (X axis, in seconds) and the total
number of sales (Y axis, in percentages) at Walmart based on data from 2012. The blue
columns show the percentage of tra c for a given loading speed. Source: SlideShare

Another analysis performed by Moz (a well known source for SEO enthusiasts) proved the
correlation between content loading speed and higher ranking in search engines.

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This graph shows the correlation between TTFB and Google search ranking. Source: How
Website Speed Actually Impacts Search Ranking

A website’s ranking position is in correlation with Time To First Byte (TTFB), the amount of
time it takes for the user to receive the rst byte of information from their content
provider.

The above graph also shows all websites that were included in this analysis have excellent
content loading speed (and high search rank positions).

Tweet this: For every 1 second of improvement WalMart experienced up to a 2% increase

in conversions

Tweet this: For every 100 ms of improvement, WalMart grew incremental revenue by up
to 1%

There are so many bene ts of user performance but here are the top 3 reasons why you
should care about maximum performance and top speed:

1. User satisfaction
Long load time equals high bouncing rates. The bounce rate is an important factor that
any website owner should ALWAYS take into account. In simpler terms, it’s when a user
visits your website and rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site,
leaves. It is considered as one of the most important measures of e ectiveness for a
website.
Considering the improved technology of today, a website with simple content should
completely load within 2 seconds. Loading time is crucial since it directly a ects the

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satisfaction or dissatisfaction levels of your visitors, and therefore your page revenue. In
other words, time is of the essence!

2. Improved search rankings

Since April 2010, Google started to take load time into account when ranking sites. Of
course, Google’s algorithm uses much more factors that determine how to rank search
engine results, but the page load speed is taken into account and should be a priority.
Improving your page load time is an e ective way to help visitors get where they are going
faster, and it helps you stay on top of the search results which is the best way to get
spotted by potential users. Page speed matters now, more than ever. Whether your
customers are there for a pretty interface, clear privacy policies, for the best bargain, or
simply because they have found exactly what they were looking for, they had to get there
in the rst place, and quickly. If you could cut that path to your website even shorter, and
this is a matter of milliseconds, you could convert more visits to actual orders.

3. Mobile users
Mobile users are more patient than computer users, main reason being is that they’re used
to having slower internet speed. But considering today’s connection speeds, loading time
for mobile is an important factor. As you may presume, things are di erent for mobile
devices (including tablets) even though xed connections are enough to not cause too
many problems for website loading time. Mobile page optimization is more important than
ever, since web browsing is now mainly done via mobile devices.

In fact, here are three crucial points to Google’s mobile customer experience swing:

Tweet this: 93% of users who research a product or service on mobile device actually
buy products.

Tweet this: 66% of e-mails are opened on mobile devices.

Tweet this: The amount of shoppers who made a purchase on a mobile device increased
2.5x from 2009-2014.

An advantage of 250 milliseconds of page load time, according to recent research, is what
keeps your customer from going to a competitor. By choosing CDN over standard hosting,
you ensure that the content is delivered from a server located closest to the end user.
This will also save you money on buying additional hardware and software for the server.

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Here are some other amazing performance optimizations done by other web giants:

Tweet this: Shopzilla reduced average page load time from 6 seconds to 1.2 seconds, &
increased revenue +12% & page views +25%.

Tweet this: Yahoo increased tra c by 9% for every 400ms of improvement.

Tweet this: Mozilla got 60 million more Firefox downloads/year, by making their pages
2.2 seconds faster.

Tweet this: Advantage of 250ms of a page load time keeps your customer from going to
your competitor.

Tweet this: Amazon and Walmart increased revenue by 1% for every 100ms of better
page load time.

History of Content Delivery Networks

The Internet is a constantly-changing mechanism, and new forms of data and content are
constantly being created. Soon after it was made commercially available, the problem of
pushing massive amounts of data to the end user as fast as possible had to be solved.
Enter CDNs.

The roots of CDNs were created almost twenty years ago and continue to be the driving

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force of content delivery. Since its creation, there have been signi cant research e orts
directed toward this technology by academia and commercial developers. CDNs could
easily be considered as one of the top emerging technologies that impact our web
experience.

The rst Content Delivery Networks were built by Akamai Technologies, Inc. based in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their CDNs are responsible for 15-30% of global Internet tra c.
They have over 2200 Points of Presence in 120 countries and are a liated with 1500
networks. Companies that followed suit and also built their CDNs include AT&T, Telstra and
Deutsche Telekom.

Since the introduction of CDNs, the market has seen a signi cant boost in the delivery of
broadband content and the streaming of audio, video and associated data over across the
Internet. In short, this is the life cycle of CDNs so far:

The evolution of Content Delivery Networks can be organized in four periods:

Pre-formation Period: the rst period gave rise to server farms, hierarchical caching,
improvements in Web servers and caching proxy deployment. The rst big step was
infrastructure development, mirroring, caching and multihoming. These technologies
created a perfect starting point for CDNs to be made and to grow along.

The rst generation: the rst gen CDNs focused primarily on dynamic and static content
delivery, as these were the only two content types on the web. The principle mechanism
of the rst gen was the creation and the implementation of replicas, intelligent routing
and edge computing methods. Apps and info were split across the servers.

Second generation: the second generation of CDNs was mainly focused on Video-on-
Demand, know also as VoD, which is streaming video and audio content amongst users and
news services.The second generation of CDNs cleared a path for delivering content to
mobile users, at the time it was truly revolutionary. The second gen CDNs are also credited
with the usage of P2P, cloud computing techniques to delivery and maintain content. It
was still in a stage of infancy, though.

Third generation: the third generation of CDNs is upcoming and is expected to be modelled
for community, meaning that the systems will be driven by average users and regular
individuals. Self-con guring is expected to be the new technological mechanism, as well as
self-managing and autonomic content delivery. Quality of experience is expected to be in
the focus.

CDNs have a decade-long history with roots spanning from the late 90’s and have always
adapted to the changing technologies and other user requirements. After all, change is
one of the basic principles that drives the web. However, it is di cult to predict what’s
next for the CDN market, as there is so much research and development to be done. The
development of content delivery networks sought to deal with extreme bandwidth
pressures, rst as video streaming was growing in demand as well as the number of
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content providers. That was in the past. With the emergence of cloud computing, CDNs
have become a continual trend involving all layers of cloud computing:

SaaS (Software as a service), e.g. Google Docs

IaaS (Infrastructure as a service), e.g. Amazon

PaaS (Platform as a service) e.g. Google App Engine

BPaaS (Business Process as a service) e.g. advertisements, payments

Future of Content Delivery Networks

Even though it is hard to accurately predict what the future of CDNs will be, one thing is
certain: this industry will grow exponentially, which means that the technologies used to
run them will develop even further.

The main goals for the future are performance, availability and security.

To understand how the CDN industry will continue to develop, we can use the development
of tra c logistics in urban areas.

Many new technologies are being developed or tested as we speak, including systems for
tra c jam prediction and automated cars (designed to be self-driven to prevent the
occurence of tra c accidents). Their implementation could lead to totally new urban
landscapes where tra c will be safer and there will even be more parking spaces.

The same is expected to happen in the CDN industry as well.

CDN Providers currently have only one way of collecting PoP performance data and that is
through Log Files. Their sheer volume, variety and rate at which they are updated make
problem solving, system upgrades and quality assessment that much more tasking.

For this reason, one of the goals for the future of CDN is developing predictive analytics
and algorithms that can predict behavioral patterns based on machine learning. These
technologies based on the OSI model of communication functions should replace BGP
(Border Gateway Protocol), the technology currently responsible for directing Internet
tra c, and completely eliminate security threats.

Facebook has already developed a similar technology called Open/R and Google has
developed its own called Espresso.

The key players responsible for coming up with technologies that will replace BGP are some
of the world’s major Internet companies and every one of them has a di erent approach
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to the topic. That’s why it’s hard to know exactly what kind of solutions they are coming
up with. Also, information is limited because these technologies are still only used in
autonomous systems owned by their developers.

BGP is still here to stay, though: it will be used to transmit user requests to autonomous
systems ran by new technology. In other words, it will still be the only mode of
communication between autonomous systems, as well as between autonomous systems
and the user.

Three main disadvantages of BGP

Negative e ect on network scalability: every router that belongs to an autonomous

system or network has to store the addresses of all other routers that belong to the same
network in its routing table. The bigger the network, the longer the routing table, and this
requires the router to have su cient memory. Many old routers don’t (or can’t be
updated).

This problem can be solved by adding route re ectors to the network. Instead of
connecting to each other, the routers all connect to the route re ector.

This table growth is caused by using BGP and overall has a negative e ect on network
scalability.

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A graph showing BGP table growth on the Internet. Source: Wikipedia

In exibility: BPG-ran routers can’t predict if and when network congestion will occur
because their packet forwarding mechanisms can only reach the packet’s transport layer.
This means the router can’t access information such as the state of the packet and the
optimal path for the packet to reach its destination. It is possible to manually control some
aspects of path selection, but this is still not scalable enough.

Security issues: Internet tra c almost always involves packets being transferred through
several autonomous systems (eg. an ISP and its infrastructure) that have previously
agreed on terms and conditions under which tra c is allowed. Autonomous systems have
to trust each other and this is where the problem arises.

Looking Glass is a program speci cally designed for the purpose of nding out the
process of path selection based on manual rules set for a given router. This also allows
insight into packet transfer through several autonomous systems and rules that de ne
optimal path selection.

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Bene ts of Content Delivery Networks

Mobile and app-based internet force more and more content providers, content publishers,
and online vendors to simplify navigation and improve user experience, primarily the page
load time of their website. Just one second of delay can cause up to 7% loss in customer
conversions, which is more than harmful. This is where a content delivery network (CDN)
comes in as essential for those interested in global Internet connectivity.

Image Source

Here are 8 reasons why implementing CDN into your business ecosystem is something you
must consider:

Global accessibility: Content Delivery Networks help make content globally available and
accessible, bypassing the problem of content source and destination by having multiple
Points of Presence (PoPs). This facilitates global business transaction

Going global is the rst step to a high-quality

Scattered Points of Presence: if the main server of a network is a whole continent away
from a customer located in Asia, when the customer makes a query, content delivery will
be slow. For this reason, CDNs use servers that are located as close as possible to the
geographical location of the end user. This signi cantly speeds up content delivery.

online business.and eliminates disturbances (slow or unsuccessful transactions).

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This illustration shows how a CDN Provider located in New York delivers its content across
the globe. Orange = location of PoPs and Delivery Nodes storing replicated content that
the CDN Provider wants to share with their users. Green = the distance between end user
and the PoP closest to them.

Automatic data analytics: Usually, CDN Providers charge for their services based on data
volume (they often charge for every GB of data delivered). This includes data analytics:
most used search queries, time, location, etc. Data analytics allows companies to improve
their business model and see which practices work, which don’t, and where there is room
for growth.

Less delays: CDNs use globally accessible servers and replicate content. Their end users
are usually closer to PoPs than the main servers which makes for less delays in content
delivery.

Lower rates of network congestion: It’s simple – when congestion rates are lower,
performance is better. Network congestion often occurs when a large number of users
want to access a website at the same time. Being able to redirect users to replicated
content leads to less network congestion, superior performance overall and better User
Experience.

Protection against DDoS attacks: the purpose of DDoS attacks is not just to make a
website temporarily unavailable. They aim to diminish trust in the company running the
website in question, negatively in uence public opinion about CDN Providers and other
related services. All of this inevitably leads to nancial losses.

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Increased reliability and trustworthiness: There is a very high probability the content
delivered through CDNs will maintain optimal quality in comparison with content delivered
through other sources. CDNs are designed so content could be distributed at a faster rate.
This makes the factual information shared more trustworthy, which has a positive e ect
on customer satisfaction.

Lower overhead costs: CDNs eliminate having to pay for expensive foreign services and for
multiple providers. Content distributed through these networks is available globally with
the help of just one provider. Paying customers can allocate Internet tra c to more
Delivery Nodes if that’s what they need and that solves the problem of content availability
e ectively.

Other than the top 8 things, here’s a short list of some other bene ts that a CDN can
provide to a website which can greatly improve site performance and user experience:

Increased revenue by 1% for every 100 ms of improvement to your page load time

Retaining more customers (they are more satis ed)

More manageable tra c

Maximum availability of your product

Easy delivery of video, audio rich content

Build more interactive website at no cost of losing visitors due to latencies

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Reaching mobile customers with ease

Setting your own criteria to enable the best possible performance for your website

More scalability to your business, you can grow it as much as you want to

Tweet this: Just one second of delay can cause up to 7% loss in customer conversions.

Tweet this: CDN future looks bright, with around 20% growth YoY.

Tweet this: CDNs can provide basic protection against DDoS attacks.

What is the Best CDN (Content Delivery Network)?

To succeed, organizations need a CDN partner that can support their needs with ease and
agility – but how do you select the right one, given that technical and business
requirements are constantly changing?

Choosing a CDN that stays ahead of the continual advances in web and mobile
technologies as well as the evolving threat landscape – will enable you to consistently
o er your customers the best possible online experiences while minimizing operational
complexity and overhead costs.

But the question arises: what is the best CDN?

The only answer to this question is: best CDN depends on your use case.

Choosing a CDN (content delivery network) can be a daunting task. There are a range of
available solutions out there, and at rst glance they can appear similar.

However, once you get into the details you will nd that there are some striking
di erences between the CDNs.

1) Your organization's needs

This may sound obvious, but it’s important to note. Before you start comparing and
analyzing various CDN providers, you must rst take stock of your own needs and
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requirements.

What kind of a website do you have? Are you running an ecommerce shop? Where are your
users located? What kind of media do you serve your users the most (text, video, etc.)?
What’s your budget?
You have to answer lal these questions rst so you can formulate a general idea about
what do you need from your CDN provider. Di erent CDNs can have di erent specialties,
and it’s important to pick one, or several, that will meet your speci c needs.

2) User geography
Geography plays a major role in content delivery.

You need to know where your audience is located. Is it local, regional, or global?

It’s important to choose a CDN that has Points of Presence (PoPs) in the areas where your
audience is located. Each PoP should have adequate egress capacity to ensure your
audience receives the fastest possible experience. The CDN should also have peering
agreements with the local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and last-mile networks that
serve your audience, in order to eliminate “last-mile” bottlenecks between the CDN and the
user’s internet connection.

If you’re planning to only deliver content to a local audience, you don’t need a global CDN,
you’re probably better o with a local one.
Also, some CDN providers specialize in speci c geographic areas. For example, if you want
to deliver your content to China from, let’s say, US, you’re not only facing geographical
distance – you also need to take into account additional requirements that Chinese
government imposes.

3) Speed and reliability

One of the crucial factors in your decision will most likely be the speed and reliability of a
CDN. The three most important ways to measure speed and reliability are:

Response time -the metric of how long it takes for a server to answer a browser
request

Latency -the amount of time it takes the host server to receive and process a
request for an object, like a CSS le or an image. When a visitor clicks on your page,
the number of objects that need to load will a ect the total response time.

Throughput - how steadily the content is delivered.

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The CDN service provider you select should have a large network. Simply put, the more
servers you have, the faster and more reliably content you can deliver your content. More
servers equals less bu ering, greater redundancy, more scalability, and so on.

Since end users are connecting to your site via a CDN, you need to ensure maximum
uptime and availability. Assess CDNs on their ability to be held accountable to an SLA.

4) Cost and pricing models

It’s very important to prioritize both cost and performance before selecting a CDN.

You need to understand how a few milliseconds of latency might a ect your user’s
experience. If you are running a mission-critical website or application where a few
hundred milliseconds makes a big impact to your business, you might want to choose a
CDN that has the best possible performance.

However, perhaps your website or application is not mission critical, and those few
hundred milliseconds are invisible or inconsequential to your users. In that case, you could
choose a CDN that costs less and has almost as good a performance against the best
performing CDN.

5) Security
Security is a serious consideration when choosing a CDN. Features such as encryption,
DDoS mitigation, and compliance all play a key role in selecting a vendor. Encryption
ensures that your customers’ identities, transactions, and the integrity of your website are
protected in transit between an endpoint and the CDN’s edge.

DDoS attacks are certainly a pervasive force and something that cloud vendors ght on a
frequent basis; ensure that the vendor has the requisite strength to fend o these
attacks so that your content is always able to be served. Finally, compliance plays a key
role in vendor selection if the content you are serving from a CDN requires an extra bit of
care (eg. sensitive medical information, nancial data, etc.).

6) Support
Every good CDN provider should o er you assistance whenever you need it.

The quality of a CDN’s support and services sta directly re ects the quality of the CDN.
The right CDN o ers teams with a depth of expertise and breadth of experience – teams
who have helped design the Internet’s most innovative sites, deliver its biggest events,and

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mitigate its largest attacks. They should be able to provide expertly managed delivery,
broadcast, and security services with 24/7,proactive, round-the-globe monitoring and
support – giving their customers access to top- ight specialists in web, mobile,
streaming,and security whenever and wherever they need it.

Content Delivery Network Companies

The industry has grown signi cantly in recent years, as the importance of a CDN has also
grown. The CDN market was valued at USD 9.24 billion in 2018, and it is expected to reach
a value of USD 38.97 billion by 2024, at a CAGR of 27.30%, over the forecast period of
2019-2024.

Emerging mobile content delivery networks, growing internet tra c, and increasing video
content over the internet are some of the factors providing growth opportunities to the
content delivery networks market.

The Internet is always evolving and so is the need for faster websites and better user
experience. Nowadays, there are more and more CDN providers, but here is a quick list of
the top 25:

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Content Delivery Network Market Trends

Swift expansion of Internet-based services such as online video, streaming media, online
music, online games have increased the need for expansion of the web, as well as the
demand for better Quality of Service (QoS).

CDNs have emerged as an ideal solution to meet all these problems and to meet the
demand of delivering better quality content to users. The CDN market is driving on the
growth of high implementation rate of CDN solutions in the U.S., Europe (EU), and Asia
Paci c (APAC) regions.

The content delivery network (CDN) market was valued at USD 9.24 billion in 2018, and it is
expected to reach a value of USD 38.97 billion by 2024, at a CAGR (Compound Annual
Growth Rate) of 27.30%, over the forecast period (2019-2024).

North America holds the largest share in the CDN market. North America has a high internet
penetration rate, which is expected to aid the growth of content in the region. With the
presence of the market leaders and early adoption of technologies across various end-
user verticals, North America stood as the leading regional market and is expected to
continue its dominance, over the forecast period.

There are several new trends that helped increase the growth rate and the adoption rate
of CDNs:

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1. Expanded Internet usage and reach

Over the course of the last decade, the number of internet users worldwide has tripled
from 1 billion in 2005 to 3 billion in 2015. Smartphones helped out as well, as 2 out of 3
adults in USA owns a smartphone. Worldwide, smartphones will make up roughly 50
percent of mobile phone users by 2017. Traditional solutions, like an accelerated WAN, can’t
keep up with the pace of change and the amount of dynamic content and diverse access
points.

2. Mobile
As users become more sophisticated – and 3G and 4G networks more prevalent –
expectations for website speed and performance, no matter the device, are higher, as
mobile users expect similar web experience to desktop. Google started the mobile friendly
search initiative, which, in other words, means that mobile-optimized website (design,
performance and speed) could o er a competitive advantage in search results. This made
way for dynamic mobile optimized CDNs.

3. Global eCommerce
Global B2C ecommerce sales are expected to reach $1.92 trillion U.S. dollars in 2016. In the
rst quarter of 2015, retail ecommerce sites had more than $80 billion in sales, compared
to $26.5 billion in the rst quarter of 2006. CDNs became an imperative for smooth
eCommerce websites.

4. Video streaming
More than 6 billion videos are viewed on YouTube’s platform each day. Facebook reported
its users watch about 4 billion videos every day, 75 percent of them on a mobile phone. A
CDN reduces latency for high bandwidth content like streaming video.

5. Internet security
Whenever customers type in their credit card numbers to make a purchase online, they are
placing their trust in that business. DDoS attacks are on the rise and new ways of Internet
security are being developed; all of which have helped increase the growth of CDNs, as
cloud security adds another layer of security. CDNs can greatly improve the security of a
website.

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Here are some factors contributing to the growth of CDN market:

Increase in total annual Internet tra c for 40% (source: Beyond fast – How the
speed of residential Internet access will develop between now and 2022)

Increase in total number of Internet users

A higher demand for high-quality video content, increasing for 82% by 2023

Projections for CDN markets have proven to be overly conservative because the market
are, in fact, growing faster than expected. The following two graphs illustrate projections
made in 2013 for the period between 2010 and 2017.

It was estimated that by 2017 the CDN market will be valued at $4.5 billion, which is $2.83
less than the actual value it reached in 2017:

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Graph illustrating total revenue for CDN markets from 2010 to 2017. Source: Goran Čandrlić
– How big is content delivery market?

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Graph illustrating the distribution of CDN revenues per region from 2010 to 2017.
Source: Goran Čandrlić – How big is content delivery market?

As viewers consume more video, more often, for longer periods of time, at higher quality,
and on more devices, the content delivery market is as hot as it has ever been. It’s also
important to note that the two major things that have marked the evolution of internet
are mobile technology and social media. Additionally, growing IP video tra c is expected to
boost the CDN market. Today, video consumption over mobile devices and internet is
growing at unparalleled rate. As network operators become aware of advantages of CDN,
numerous cable operators and telcos in Europe and North America have launched CDN
initiatives.

Numerous industry verticals that use CDN include advertising industry, media and
entertainment, gaming, government, educational and healthcare, online music retailers,
consumer electronics, mobile operators, and internet service providers among others,
launching a perfect background for CDN to grow.

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Tweet this: The Content Delivery Networks (#CDN) Market is estimated to grow to $12.16
billion by 2019.

Content Delivery Networks and Security

The impact of DDoS attacks is much more than meets the eye. Not only can these attacks
in ict huge economic losses, they can also have a serious impact on the reputation and
the image of the victimized company or organization.

Research has shown that it takes at least 10 hours before a company can begin to resolve
an attack, while it takes 4.5. hours on average before the attack even gets detected and
an additional 4.9 hours before mitigation can begin. The average cost of an attack is
$100,000 per hour, meaning that a DDoS attack can cost 1$ million before an Internet-
reliant rm even starts to mitigate the attack.

Image Source

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In order to protect your company, you need a mitigation protection in place, to keep both
your brand reputation and IT infrastructure out of the harm’s way. Any web solution must
t the business requirements. Defending against DoS attacks occurring at the network
layer requires a network architecture that can absorb large bursts of tra c and that
lters all tra c so that only web tra c is permitted onto the network. Every business is
di erent and requires a di erent approach.

These are the key questions to ask when it comes to choosing a DDoS mitigation solution:

Does it o er positive protection?

Many DDoS attacks at the network level can be stopped by only allowing legitimate HTTP
tra c onto the network. The solution should drop all other non-application tra c or UDP
packets without application payloads.

Does the solution absorb all attack tra c?

Not all attacks target web applications or services. Attacks sometimes attempt to sneak
in through FTP or non-web ports; so you need to look for a solution that can evaluate all
of your tra c in order to protect the site more e ectively.

Does the solution stop attacks before they reach your data center?
Cloud solutions are designed to stop an attack before it ever reaches your data center.
This means you need not be concerned about DDoS attacks impacting your data center.
On-premises devices protect you once the attack reaches the device, which means the
attack will invade your data center.

Does the solution impact performance?

Ecommerce and media streaming applications demand excellent performance. The more
tra c and the more attack types, the more rules you need and the more hardware is
necessary; look for a solution that’s architected for both performance and security.

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Image Source

What is the total cost of ownership?

Many security managers look at the price of a solution but not at the total cost of
ownership. Consider the cost of the device, the cost of the redundant systems needed,
and the expense of data breach compared with the e ectiveness of the solution.
Traditional solutions on which many companies have relied, oversize the bandwidth and
adopt complex hardware such as rewalls and load balancers. This approach is considered
by many experts costly and in many cases ine ective. Bots still outnumber humans online,
accounting for 56% of Internet tra c versus humans at 44%. And bad or malicious bots
account for more tra c than good bots, with 29% of a site’s tra c. Good bots represent
27% of site visits. Advertisers are losing $6.3 billion to $10 billion per year of ad revenue to
fraud, thanks to the epidemic of phony ad tra c perpetrated by bots. Cloud-based
services live outside of a company’s data center in order to secure tra c before it reaches
company infrastructure. There are two primary types of Cloud-based anti-DoS/DDoS
services: those that route suspicious tra c to a centralized location where malicious
tra c is ltered out, and Website Protection Services that utilize CDN to absorb and
inspect malicious tra c across a distributed network of servers to shield company
websites and applications. Another advantage of this choice is the sensible reduction of
investment in equipment and infrastructure and of course the reduction of the costs of
management typical of hardware solutions.

Does CDN solve security issues?

Since CDNs use surrogate servers located across di erent data centers in di erent regions
around the globe, this scattered infrastructure provides a more secure network.CDNs are
known to absorb less-sophisticated DDoS attacks, simply with bandwidth. With CDNs, you
gain the advantage of – size. The overload caused by DDoS attack is processed on
di erent PoPs according to their origin, which helps to prevent server saturation. Many
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CDN providers will also block threats and limit abusive bots and crawlers from wasting your
bandwidth and server resources. This will result in the decrease of spam and hack attacks.
Again, this depends of a service that your CDN provider is o ering.

Tweet this: CDNs can prevent website security issues including DDoS attacks.

Tweet this: The average cost of a DDoS attack is $100,000 per hour.

Tweet this: On average, it takes 10 hours for a company to begin resolving a DDoS attack

Content Delivery Networks for Speci c Verticals

Content Delivery Networks for Streaming

Video streaming is one of the largest mega-trends today. It’s a whole new way of
consuming content, involving speci c technologies and challenges.

Video is currently the most requested content format on the Internet. Distributing video
using CDN requires a di erent approach than distributing other types of content.

The very nature of video as content is di erent because users (usually) want to watch it
instantly and not download and watch it later (unlike having to download and install an
app before being able to use it).

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Image Source

You can broadcast live streams through a Content Delivery Network (CDN) such as Akamai,
through the KMC. The encoding software installed (such as FMLE) encodes your real-time
camera signal and sends it out through a secure RTMP connection to the CDN. Then, using
a Kaltura Player, you can embed the live broadcast in your websites. You can set the live
stream entry metadata and specify broadcasting settings in the KMC in the same way
VOD content is managed. By using a CDN for live streaming, you guarantee a better
experience for your viewers worldwide.

There are two types of video content:

Video on demand: video content that has been prerecorded and is available for
streaming at any time. Example: using Net ix to watch movies or TV shows.

Live video: video content that is possible to watch as it is being recorded, with no or
as little delay as possible.Example: a live broadcast of a football game.

There are also two types of video content providers:

OTT (Over the Top) providers: these providers deliver their video content through an
Internet infrastructure rather than using traditional media like television. Examples:
Net ix, Amazon Video, Hulu, smaller independent services.

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IPTV (Internet Protocol Television): these providers deliver television content through
Internet Protocol networks using Internet connection rather than through traditional
satellite or cable formats. Examples: watching television content in real time or
recording content that the user can watch later at their convenience.

Users want to watch video now, without delay.. To achieve that goal, CDN Service Providers
use advanced technologies:

RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol): RTSP is a network control protocol designed to
control streaming media servers and a set of simple commands for users, such as play,
pause and record.

RTP (Real-Time Transfer Protocol) is another protocol, responsible for the transmission of
streaming data. Other protocols used are UDP (User Datagram Protocol) and TCP
(Transmission Control Protocol).

The main advantage of RTSP is it doesn’t require local storage content. All content is live
access. Its disadvantages are higher price, complex implementation process and no
possibility for CDN support. That’s why today it is rarely used.

ABR (Adaptive Bitrate Streaming): This streaming technology is based on HTTP (Hypertext
Transfer Protocol) and progressive downloading (downloading and watching smaller chunks
of video content at a time while the rest of the video is still being downloaded).

How ABR works. Source: Wikipedia

An encoder is used to produce smaller bit rates from the original video le. These smaller
chunks of information are stored on the user’s computer and are pieced together through
a Manifest File that is being downloaded every few seconds.

The smaller chunks of information are in fact several seconds long pieces of video
content. They can be downloaded in di erent qualities (High, Medium, Low Bitrate Stream).
The quality a ects their total size. The size of these chunks depends on detecting the
user’s bandwidth and the technical speci cations of the device the user is using for

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streaming video. This process of determining the size and quality of downloadable chunks
runs automatically.

The relationship between stream quality and user’s available bandwidth. Source: Wikipedia

ABR’s main advantage is the fact it is based on HTTP, which makes it optimized for
excellent performance on the Internet. It is also compatible with CDN: video content can
be stored in its Delivery Nodes, which makes it more accessible for the user.

Today, ABR is implemented for use on various platforms and operating systems, including
Flash (Youtube), iOS and Android. MPEG-DASH is an internationally standardized bit rate
streaming technology used across di erent devices and wireless networks.

Despite the advent of ABR and HTTP streaming, there still is a need for live video delivery,
since live video can’t be cached like the content that has been previously recorded.
Progressive downloads are the favourable option, in contrast to direct downloads where
the entire video clip needed to be downloaded to a viewer’s computer before it could be
viewed. While this is acceptable for downloading a game or computer application, the
tolerance level of viewers waiting for content to download—especially something such as
a movie, which could be over 1GB in size, was low.

The rst huge notable website that relied on progressive downloads was YouTube. the CDN
begins delivering the download, but a viewer can begin watching content within the rst
3-5 seconds, on the assumption that the viewer’s fast internet connection will continue to
download the video clip at a fast enough pace to avoid running out of viewable content.
As the speed of the internet connections outpaced the bitrates used for standard-
de nition content, many viewers would have the entire video clip downloaded before they
were even halfway through viewing the content.

The best solution so far is called HTTP streaming, and it is coupled very tightly with
adaptive bitrate (ABR) encoding and delivery. HTTP streaming uses generic HTTP servers
(often based on Apache or Windows Server) to deliver on-demand video les the same
way that other HTTP website content—such as images and text les—is delivered.
Adaptive bitrate is added to a CDN, which converts a video stream into fragments or
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chunks, often 2-10 seconds in length. ABR creates discrete streams at various bitrates and
then uses feedback from the internet user’s video player to dynamically detect the
optimum network speed for delivery of the video clip.

Streaming servers deliver the content at the time of a request, but only deliver the bits
requested rather than the entire length of the video clip. This was helpful for the content
owner who was paying the CDN for delivery by the bit, since a viewer choosing to abandon
viewing of a clip halfway through its duration would not have downloaded the entire clip,
regardless of the viewer’s internet connection speed.

One of the latest trends in technology, the 4K Ultra HD is about to get much bigger. The
impact of 4K is growing month by month. The new resolution format itself is slowly
starting to remake perceptions of where the entire visual media industry will be going over
the next few years. Consumers want high quality and resolution, and broadcasters want
their ultra HD recordings and their live casts available everywhere. Mobile browsing is the
largest growing and the most adopted megatrend so far. It’s taking over desktop and
getting bigger every day.

Image Source

A fast high-speed Internet connectivity is crucial to the wider proliferation of 4K. The data
loads that 4K streams is truly massive and content broadcasters are painfully aware of
this. Faster connectivity is a major issue that 4K providers are tirelessly working on. An
expansion in the number of homes that can enjoy access to internet speeds that at least
consistently cover the minimum of 25Mbps necessary for reliable ultra HD streams. With
the fast expansion of 4K and high resolution streaming, the adoption of CDNs is only
expected to grow.

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Tweet this: With growing 4K and high-res streaming, the adoption of CDNs is expected
to continue to grow.

CDN for Emerging Markets

An emerging market is a country that has some characteristics of a developed market, but
does not meet standards to be a developed market. This includes countries that may be
developed markets in the future or were in the past. The term “frontier market” is used for
developing countries with slower economies than “emerging”, where the economies of
China and India are considered to be the largest. Iran is also considered an emerging
market.

The Indian e-commerce market is expected to grow to US$ 200 billion by 2026 from US$
38.5 billion as of 2017. Much growth of the industry has been triggered by increasing
internet and smartphone penetration. The ongoing digital transformation in the country is
expected to increase India’s total internet user base to 829 million by 2021 from 604.21
million as of December 2018. India’s Internet economy is expected to double from US$125
billion as of April 2017 to US$ 250 billion by 2020, majorly backed by ecommerce. India’s E-
commerce revenue is expected to jump from US$ 39 billion in 2017 to US$ 120 billion in
2020, growing at an annual rate of 51 per cent, the highest in the world.

The Brazilian content delivery network market is estimated to grow from $88.25 million in
2013 to $192.4 million by 2019, at a CAGR of 13.9% during the forecast period. The rapid
growth of Internet-enabled devices such as smartphones and tablets are the major
factors driving the Brazilian content delivery network market. The demand in the content
delivery market in Brazil is growing rapidly because of the increased internet consumption
in the country. The increasing trend of utilizing internet in almost every walk of life has
been on a steep rise in the Brazil market due to which the internet tra c has been
continuously increasing, thus increasing the need for an e ective CDN solutions market.

With more than 800million users, China has the world’s largest online population,
representing more than 1 out of every 5 online users globally. 98% of Chinese users are
mobile.. Delivering online content into China presents numerous challenges, including a
unique internet infrastructure and an increasingly mobile user base. Deploying a CDN meets
the unique challenges that China presents, helping global enterprises accelerate website
and media delivery, and business application responsiveness. A CDN eliminates the need to
invest in expensive local infrastructure, which reduces operational strain on your
organization.

There are 3 key factors to China’s online revenue growth potential:

China has the largest Internet population in the world (over 800million)

China is the largest ecommerce market in the world, worth around $2 trillion
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Around 98% of average Chinese consumers browse products on smartphones

The Middle East and Africa content delivery network (CDN) market is estimated to grow
from $0.18 billion in 2013 to $0.45 billion by 2019, at a CAGR of 15.6% during the forecast
period. This market is driven by the rise of Internet consumption and the increasing
number of smartphone users. The growth of the CDN market in the Middle East and Africa
can be attributed to the limitations in perceived quality service while accessing content
over the web. It’s safe to say that the adoption of CDNs only expands markets.

The content delivery network market is growing; the info shown above shows the great
potential that CDNs hold for emerging markets. Content delivery networks allow access to
various servers that provide web data and web content, which are great to deliver the
best content available to countries with not so well developed IT infrastructure, while
providing maximum user experience, from source server to end-user in a reliable and timely
manner.

Tweet this: CDNs hold great potential for emerging markets like China (674M users).

10

How to Choose A Content Delivery Network Provider

If your online business is faced with increasing tra c and number of visitors (which is a
good thing), choosing the right CDN Provider is a step in the right direction if you want to
improve website speed and UX.

The CDN market has grown a lot recently and is only expected to become bigger and
bigger. There are more CDN providers than ever nowadays and it’s getting harder to
choose the right one for a business, since it’s hard to narrow down your options and list
the needs for your business.

But there are ways to do it.

Testing a potential CDN provider

Successful testing of a potential CDN provider is performed in two phases:

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Trial period: test CDN services and their performance in regions that are relevant to your
business. Have a way to collect data independent of the providers you are testing out so
you can compare data when the time comes.

Collecting and analyzing data: After collecting data comes analyzing. Be sure to cover
these ve points:

Price

Functionality

Basic and individual functionalities

Performancw

Availability of Customer Support

Price
Most CDN Providers charge for their services based on data volume. The CDN market has
become huge and, with all the choices, it is hard to say what provider is ideal for what
purpose. This is especially true in the case of small to medium-sized companies who don’t
have a large IT department due to various di erent reasons: unsure where to start, how to
prioritize IT tasks according to what phase of development the company is currently in.

Functionality
In order to be functional, every CDN system has to be designed according to 6 principles:

Availability of service: CDN architecture must not be awed in such a way that it
in uences its overall performance and the availability of distributed content

E ciency: Delivery Nodes have to be as close as possible to the geographical

location of the user because that’s what data transfer speed depends on

Constant quality of performance: this means high network throughput and minimal
delays

Elasticity: network congestion incidents have to be dealt with quickly and e ciently

Security: integrity and security must be the priority of every CDN Provider

Responding to demand: content has to be replicated wisely, according to demand

and popularity

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Basic and individual functionalities

Di erent customers need di erent functionalities that t their individual needs, but some
functionalities are basic and should be available for each customer, including:

CDN usage statistics (real-time, if possible)

FTP le transfer

Purge cache (on-demand reset of Delivery Node cache)

Performance
Knowing how well CDN services perform is one of the key pieces of information you can
have. This includes knowing at what speed di erent CDN Providers are able to deliver
content.

Be sure to calculate the minimal, maximal and average values of latency and throughput in
times of regular and heavy tra c.

Here are some common reasons why servers are still slow even though they are located
close to the end user:

Poor implementation of load balancing to Delivery Nodes

Slow and/or old hard disks

The server can’t handle the number of requests made

The server has a poor Internet connection

Customer support availability

Most CDN Providers have an around-the-clock Customer Service, but here are some other
qualities to aim for:

Professional and accommodating sta

Sta with in-depth knowledge about your business

Plausible handling time

Tweet this: I just read about what questions to ask when choosing a CDN.

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Tweet this: One of the questions for choosing a CDN provider: Are you their partner or
just another costumer?

11

Multi CDN
CDNs are known to provide a more secure network, reduced loading time of your page,
manageable tra c, maximum availability, and so on. An irreplaceable tool that will improve
the entire technological infrastructure that backs up your business. But why trust it with
only one CDN provider?

Image Source

What if you could hop from one CDN provider to another, at all times by redirecting user
requests to the optimal content source based according to your business needs. This is
known as Multiple Content Delivery Network, or multi-CDN.

Multi-CDN or Multiple Content Delivery Network is an approach to content delivery that

utilizes services from more than one CDN provider at any given time to improve key factors
like performance and functionality.

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A visual representation of Multi-CDN networks using MetaCDN’s (a CDN Services Provider)

partner networks. Source: Billy Phillips – Peer-to-Peer and the Multi-CDN Approach

Such diversi cation of your CDN providers is known to be less risky. And you can easily
balance availability and performance of your website by loading various servers on the
cloud, di erently.

Using multiple CDNs is smarter than using one CDN because:

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CDN providers perform di erently in di erent geographical regions

Not all CDN providers are reliable as others

Not all CDN providers include same features and strategies as others

You don’t need to switch CDN providers as this process becomes automated

It’s the next big thing in e-commerce

There are also several direct advantages that need to be mentioned:

You can branch out to new regions, new markets

By using di erent locations of the whole network of servers located at di erent data
centers, you can reach all web users promptly regardless of their geographical location. By
always switching to a better performing CDN, you can manage more growth to your
business, more users, more content to deliver.

You’ll gain more revenue due to a better performance

That speed a ects conversion rates is a well known fact, as an advantage of 250
milliseconds of a page load time, according to recent research, it is what keeps your
customer from going to your competitor. Using multiple Content Delivery Networks (multi-
CDN) means even more performance and less latency. Take an example of a giant such as
Amazon. The increased revenue was by 1% for every 100ms of improvement to their page
load time. Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a number one advice when it comes
to best practices in overhauling your site speed. Using multiple Content Delivery Networks
(multi-CDN) is even better.

Your cloud will never crash

A downtime to a website is a severe damage to an e-commerce business. 1 out of 4
customers will leave, never to come back again. The rest are highly unlikely to trust you
again. If you still trust a single cloud provider with your CDN, you are to face an outage at
a certain point. For a shorter while, or longer. The risk is to be disregarded only if you
choose two or more CDN providers to operate with. This is perhaps the best reason for a
multi-CDN practice. In other terms; more security and less risk.

You gain more control of your business

By orchestrating the multiple CDN providers, you can set exact criteria, e.g. time of the
day, to ensure that your customer always nds the content he seeks. And faster. You
don’t lose important data by choosing one provider over the other. Multi-CDNs
automatically switch to which ever CDN provider enables the best possible performance
for your website at any given time/place.

You don’t need to hold back your business

You don’t need to be that cautious while adding rich multimedia to your website while
using multi-CDNs. You can keep your design both attractive and instantly available to your
customers. By orchestrating di erent CDN providers, you will be able to manage all tra c
peaks. Also, to beat o bandwidth pressures and all the memory-intensive content.

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Who can use Multi-CDN?

Most commercial CDN Service Providers nowadays use Multi-CDN to improve on their
services. They often collaborate with each other on a P2P basis. If one CDN Service
Provider is not able to deliver a quality service to the user requesting content, it forwards
the request to another CDN Service Provider they are a liated with.

Content Providers can design their own Multi-CDN if they partner with a DNS Service
Provider.

In this case, the DNS Service Provider consigns their DNS servers infrastructure to the main
organization (CDN Service Provider) and all other providers the main organization is
a liated with. Then, DNS servers run a performance analysis of all CDN Service Providers
and allocate user requests based on the results.

Main advantages of Multi-CDN

All CDN Service Providers perform di erently in di erent regions. Combining services
from multiple providers results in better performance across all regions

Some CDN Service Providers are less reliable in performing certain tasks than others.
Combining services from multiple providers ensures all tasks are covered

(At least) one other CDN Service provider is always available in case of a system error

Implementing Multi-CDN using DNS services

User requests content from DNS server: the DNS server in question is consigned to
the owner of the content the user is requesting

DNS server returns a CNAME: in other words, the name of the server that can provide
the best quality service based on the user’s geographical location

User sends a request

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Tweet this: Why use one CDN provider when you can use multi CDN providers!

Tweet this: With Multi CDN you don’t need to switch providers – the process is already
automated.

Tweet this: With Multi CDN your Cloud will never crash.

12

CDN and DNS

Pairing a managed DNS solution with your CDN provides your website with extra
performance, reliability, and exibility.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers,
services, or any resource connected to the Internet, or a private network. It associates
various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities. It
basically serves as the phone book for the Internet by translating human-friendly
computer hostnames into IP addresses, but unlike a phone book, it can be quickly
updated.

DNS keeps you connected to your customers.

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Every rst user interaction with a website starts with a DNS, but if it goes down, the site
can’t be accessed. With a managed DNS solution, the probability of a total network outage
is decreased because DNS providers build their networks 100% reliable. Having an “indie”
DNS provider, as opposed to a combined professional CDN/DNS provider is a smarter bet
because if your combined provider’s network goes down you lose both ways.

A combined DNS/CDN solution ensures the maximum performance of the website, quickly
delivering the content to ensure the highest user experience possible, giving the exibility
when it comes to updating the website. Pairing a CDN with DNS allows you to:

Swap to new CDN

Add additional CDN’s

Load balance between Endpoints

Negotiate with coming providers

Every user’s rst interaction with a website begins with a DNS query. When a user lands on
a page, dozens of distinct DNS queries are issued to identify the correct source for all
content. DNS resolution can account for as much as 29% of initial page load time. Poor
DNS means slow page loads, leading to dissatis ed users and ultimately the loss of
business. You can basically distribute tra c across multiple CDNs and endpoints to
optimize the performance of your website, ensuring your content is always available, even
if a CDN is down.

According to a study done by Amazon and Google, you su er a 7% decrease in sales if

your website doesn’t load in under 3 second.

As your business grows, your DNS follows your steps. Managed DNS allows you to add
services and features and it’s simple to update. Managed DNS services can help you boost
revenues, reduce website abandonment, and improve customer satisfaction by quickly
connecting users to the resources they need. A good rst impression starts with DNS.

These are the key advantages of a paired DNS/CDN solution:

Performance – the distribution of tra c across multiple CDN’s and endpoints

optimizes the performance and levels CDN outages.

Reliability – even if a CDN goes down the provider’s network often supports CDN’s
with automated failover, giving the content availability at all time.

Availability – independent DNS service lets you pick CDN providers based on
geography, price, features and such. There’s always the option of swapping CDN

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providers without disrupting the service.

Most CDN providers implement and manage their own DNS infrastructure. Some CDN
providers have productized their internal DNS networks to supplement their core service
revenues, but a CDN provider can’t match the exibility, performance, and scalability of an
independent service provider that focuses on DNS. As a perfect complement to a CDN,
managed DNS solutions are speci cally designed to extend website performance and
reliability. Managed DNS services are ideal for companies and brands of all sizes. They o er
global footprints and use advanced load balancing and routing techniques to minimize
latency, maximize availability, and minimize costs. DNS is the rst part of the lookup
process. It is essentially what separates online brands from their consumers. If your DNS
fails then your brand may as well not exist. Latency or Resolution Time has been a widely
acknowledged consideration for e-retailers focused on end-user experience.

Internet Performance solutions are responsible for the delivery of a brand’s content and
end-user experience. Understanding customer demographics is key to positive user
experience and good business. The advantages of pairing CDN with DNS are, virtually,
in nite.

These are some additional features that a paired DNS/CDN solution provides:

Disaster preparedness (outsourcing DNS is part of a sound disaster prevention

strategy)

Security

DNS Reporting

API Integration

Tweet this: Pairing a DNS solution with your CDN provides extra performance, reliability,
and exibility

Tweet this: You su er a 7% decrease in sales if your website doesn’t load in under 3
second

13

CDN and Web Performance Monitoring

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It is widely accepted that content delivery networks are a great way to increase a
website’s performance, as providing advanced acceleration services that can improve end
user experience dramatically. However, with so many CDN providers entering the crowded
and competitive market every year, organisations looking to boost their online
performance are facing ever greater dilemmas – which CDN provider is best, how should
you measure content delivery network performance and which do you select to accelerate
your data?

Image Source

There are several methods that can be used when analysing the performance of a speci c
content delivery network provider. The most important benchmarks include:

Server side performance monitoring:

This method of testing simulates end user data requests, and then measures how quickly
a web page responds to the request. Whilst this is useful for determining response
speeds, it isn’t perfect. This is because it often only measures the time it takes for the
initial document les to be delivered, neglecting les such as images, CSS les and
JavaScript. This type of measurement is therefore highly unreliable, and can in many cases
be seconds faster than loading speeds are in reality.

Synthetic transaction monitoring:

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To overcome these server side monitoring drawbacks, a second, more accurate method
can be used. Synthetic transaction monitoring incorporates emulators and real world
browsers to test prede ned data requests from many di erent locations. Whilst this is
supposedly as close a method to measuring real world end user performance as possible,
it can also be plagued with inaccuracies. This is because it does not accurately source
requests from the exact locations that your speci c customers are based.

Measuring the performance of a few users:

This method is a more accurate way of measuring website performance, especially when
compared to the previous options. By taking a selection of your end users and measuring
how long it takes for them to access your pages, you can use the averages of these
results to make generalisations about the speed of your content delivery network.

Measuring the performance of every end user:

This is the most accurate method of measuring the performance of your website. By
measuring all actual transaction times across a network and from all users, you can record
response times from a server, network and application perspective. This, however, can be
very expensive and di cult to administer. Real end-user experience and CDN performance
can be measured using Last mile testing. Despite shortcomings, Last mile measurements
are more realistic as they measure how quickly your content is delivered from CDN servers
to end-user device. Because it incorporates last leg of connectivity service required to
deliver content, Last mile testing provides more accurate picture on end-user experience.

In addition to these benchmarks, there are certain aspects of a CDN’s network

con guration that can also be considered, depending on your exact requirements:

1. Number of POPs
The more points of presence a content delivery network provider has, the more
bandwidth and customers it can potentially handle.

2. Network reach
If you’re looking to provide your online service to either a speci c continent or
around the world, ensure the network has server location in your target markets.

3. Current customers
This fairly unscienti c method is based upon the fact that you can base your CDN
provider decisions on which provider similar sized organisations to yours they are
using. Furthermore, larger, more reputable organisations with high data acceleration
tend to use faster, more e cient networks. These are both good things to look out
for.

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Image Source

Monitoring cloud performance means measuring the level of service that the customer is
acquiring from the entire cloud environment, usually from a cloud service provider, and
measuring how well a service the provider is o ering. To understand how all of the
components (back end, front end) are attributing to utilize the full potential of such
remote IT infrastructure, for both end user and a service provider. Cloud performance
management should thus both be performed by the service provider as well as the cloud
consumer (companies, organizations, commerces), and they will di er in reporting.

Moving your system to the cloud is not enough without adequate monitoring, and cloud
performance management strategy will be critical for vendors entering the cloud
computing market. Many cloud monitoring tools can be acquired from third parties, and it
is best to use more of them in a combo.

Taking the time to consider these factors will help make sure that you get the most out of
your online acceleration services.

Tweet this: Moving your system to the cloud is not enough without adequate
monitoring.

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Tweet this: Many cloud monitoring tools can be acquired from third parties, and it is
best to use more of them in a combo.

14

Website Speed Test & Content Delivery Network

Website and page speed tests are used to determine the speed of a particular page or an
entire website.

Page speed measures the time it takes the content on a URL to load. Site speed, on the
other hand, represents how your site is performing overall. It’s scored by services like
Google PageSpeed Insights which look at various load times on your site in aggregate.

Both paid and organic search engine channels will also penalize a slow loading site.

Website speed is also a crucial factor for good user experience.This is important for every
organization, but especially for eCommerce websites and big brands with international
presence. Such companies simply can't a ord slow websites.

CDNs boost the speed of websites by caching content in multiple locations around the
world. CDN caching servers are typically located closer to end users than the host, or
origin server. Requests for content go to a CDN server instead of all the way to the
hosting server, which may be thousands of miles and across multiple autonomous
networks from the user.
Using a CDN can result in a massive decrease in page load times.

GlobalDots gives businesses complete control over how they serve content as well as
access to real-time performance analytics. The setup can be built for speed with the use
of multiple, powerful servers that have a lot of RAM and plenty of SSD storage capacity if
needed.

Regardless of where your customers are, we can reach them in the most e cient way
possible. We have found a set of next-gen CDNs that accelerate your web and mobile
applications. We push your content to the edge for an optimal end-user experience.
Globally distributed network of data centers delivers full site acceleration through
intelligent caching, content and network optimization

Through partnering with di erent service providers, we can o er a robust CDNs that
leverages a global network of strategically positioned servers that shorten your content`s
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round trip time (RTT) by bringing it forever closer to your website visitors.

We can minify your les and compress them ensuring that most commonly accessed les
are prioritized and fetched directly to the users browser.

We eliminate the exposure of your les to vulnerability all across the globe and the globe is
moving applications to the cloud. We ensure that all your website resources are
dynamically pro led within multiple points of presence.

Even with the most complex and sophisticated setups, GlobalDots can provide you with
the technology stack that ensures that the most important aspects of your site are
always up&running: deliverability, speed, availability, failover and web security (including
web application protection, bot protection, DDoS protection and mitigation). Customers like
Lufthansa, Bayer, Avast, Playtika and other leading brands and small-medium enterprises
rely on GlobalDots services to keep their sites and applications fast & secure.

15

CDN FAQ
In this section we have gathered and answered various questions we usually get from our
customers. We have this FAQ section will provide you with all additional information you
need. If not, feel free to contact our specialists to help you out with your performance and
security needs.

What is CDN and how it works?

What CDN means?

What is the best CDN?

What is the use of CDN?

Do I need a CDN?

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Is there a free CDN?

Why is CDN Important?

What is CDN and its bene ts?

Is AWS a CDN?

Is Akamai a CDN?

Is CDN Secure?

How CDN improves network performance?

How much does CDN cost?

How do you implement CDN?

What companies use Akamai?

16 Conclusion
Website owners can speed up delivery times of images, les and other media,
improve their search rankings and increase customer loyalty by contracting CDN
services. The web community has evolved to a point of realisation – that the user
experience and customer satisfaction is the ultimate brand value.
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The CDN was designed with that purpose and we’re only beginning to understand
the value and the potential that the CDN market holds, both for the largest and the
emerging markets. People want top quality and CDNs are here to deliver. The age
of streaming has already begun and customers expect awless video images and
fast processing speeds.

Let’s shortly summarize which sites would bene t the most from a CDN:

Sites with large audience

Sites streaming large video les
Sites which consist of mainly large media les like image sites, keen on
delivering rich content
Sites which have known heavy tra c from di erent locations

Search engines penalize sites that take too long to load, so optimizing deliveries by
geographic locations not only o ers faster loading speeds but also gives viewers
better quality and protects website owners from service disruptions, so there really
is no point in second guessing. Site performance and mobile friendliness is
everything nowadays, so the only choice is to either join the ride or get left behind.

Luckily, GlobalDots can help to deliver the content to your end users. Even with the
most complex and sophisticated setups, GlobalDots can provide you with the
technology stack that ensures that the most important aspects of your site are
always up&running: deliverability, speed, availability, failover and web security
(including web application protection, bot protection, DDoS protection and
mitigation). Customers like Lufthansa, Bayer, Avast, Lamborghini and other leading
brands and small-medium enterprises rely on GlobalDots services to keep their
sites and applications fast & secure.

Contact us today to help you out with your performance and security needs.

What Our Customers Are Saying

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“GlobalDots “This platform "I approached

has helped is nothing GlobalDots
us a lot in short of because I was
monitoring amazing! looking for a
without
great cloud-
human On the rst based WAF
intervention. day (and and DDoS
without any protection
The customization provider for
anomaly whatsoever) our customers
detection we already that would
basically got new not hinder
discovered insight that performance.
80% of the we were not GlobalDots
bugs we able to see helped me by
have, and before. discussing the
100% of the
options on the
downtime A week in and market and
we had. our ops helping us
teams across choose the
It has by far the board best t for us.
surpassed were already The result was
anything we able to get a great
thought it so much more product at a
will achieve out of our great price. It
in a way the logs. It's a was an easy
alerts game and
become changer.” informative
almost
experience
irrelevant.” Dekel Shavit,
and I would
Biocatch •
recommend
CISO
Shmulik GlobalDots to
Ahituv, anyone that is
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Payoneer in the market

DevOps for IT
Team performance
Leader and security
technologies."

Eric Joyce,
KalioCommerce
Director,
Hosting and
Security

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