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Community Blog What Is the Difference Between CDN and DCDN

What Is the Difference Between CDN and DCDN

This article describes the difference between Alibaba Cloud DCDN and CDN.

CDN Definition

CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a distributed network built over the bearer network and contains edge nodes deployed in different regions. Alibaba Cloud CDN offloads network traffic from origin servers to prevent network congestion. You can use Alibaba Cloud CDN to accelerate website content delivery in different regions or scenarios.

Alibaba Cloud CDN retrieves resources from origin servers and caches the resources on CDN nodes deployed across the world. When clients request the resources, the requests do not need to be redirected to the origin servers. Instead, Alibaba Cloud CDN automatically retrieves the resources cached on the CDN nodes closest to the clients and returns the resources to the clients.

DCDN Definition

DCDN (Dynamic Route for Content Delivery Network) is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service that is developed by Alibaba Cloud to accelerate static and dynamic content delivery. This service provides an all-purpose solution to resolve issues of high latencies, packet losses, and service instability. These issues may occur due to various causes, such as unstable networks, unexpected traffic spikes, and network congestions. The issues may also occur if your website contains static and dynamic content, content is delivered across network providers, or only one origin server is used. You can use DCDN to improve the overall performance of your website and accelerate content delivery to improve user experience.

How DCDN works

Alibaba Cloud DCDN uses smart routing to differentiate requested content so that the acceleration of dynamic content delivery is separated from the acceleration of static content delivery. The following architecture diagram shows how DCDN works.

图1

  • Intelligent differentiation of dynamic and static content: After a domain name is added to Alibaba Cloud DCDN, the dynamic and static content that is accessed through the domain is intelligently identified and differentiated.
  • Separate acceleration of dynamic and static content delivery: Static content delivery is accelerated by Alibaba Cloud CDN. Alibaba Cloud CDN caches content to CDN nodes that are the nearest to users. Dynamic content can be retrieved from origins through dynamic acceleration technologies such as smart routing optimization and protocol optimization.

Comparison between DCDN and CDN

  • Supported resource type: CDN is static content only; DCDN is both static and dynamic content.
  • Acceleration method: CDN caches static content from origin servers to Alibaba Cloud CDN nodes that are the closest to users; DCDN uses CDN to accelerate static content delivery, DCDN uses the dynamic acceleration technologies including smart routing and protocol optimization to retrieve dynamic content from origin servers.
  • Origin configuration: For CDN, we recommend that you separate dynamic and static content on the origin server and use CDN to accelerate the delivery of only static content; For DCDN, you do not need to modify content on the origin server. DCDN can intelligently identify dynamic and static content and separate the acceleration of dynamic content from the acceleration of static content.

Related Blog

Alibaba Cloud Best Practice for CDN: A Comprehensive Analysis on Industry Applications

Alibaba Cloud recently released a comprehensive map of best practice for Alibaba Cloud CDN in industry applications. This detailed map was designed based on years of practices of Alibaba Cloud CDN in the Alibaba ecosystem, and by considering the requirements of tens of thousands of enterprises on the cloud. For this purpose, this map presents customers' practice of using CDN in three stages, that is, convenient extension, all-in-one distribution, and diversified management. We hope that this map can help customers find and deploy the most suitable path for their own CDN practice.

The Best Practices of Alibaba Cloud's DCDN in the Game Industry

In the second live stream class of the National Acceleration Festival, Yanyi, Architect of Alibaba Cloud's CDN solution, did a presentation about the "Best Practices of Alibaba Cloud's DCDN in the Game Industry." Aiming at features and difficulties in the game industry, Yanyi introduced the core features and implementation methods of Alibaba Cloud's Dynamic Route for Content Delivery Network (DCDN).

Everyone is familiar with the game industry. With the continuous enhancement of products, technologies, and capital support in the game field, higher-quality games have appeared in China in recent years. These games continually attract new gamers. With the popularity of smartphones and the advent of 5G, the number of gamers has grown exponentially.

Related Product

Alibaba Cloud CDN

You can use content delivery network (CDN) to deliver content to users from the nodes that are nearest to them, accelerating the response to user requests and increasing the response rate. CDN also resolves the delivery latency problem that is usually caused by distribution, bandwidth, and server performance issues. CDN has been applied in multiple scenarios, including site acceleration, on-demand streaming, and live streaming.

Alibaba Cloud DCDN

A content delivery acceleration service, based on Alibaba Cloud's CDN to accelerate content delivery for hybrid sites, dynamic sites, and applications.

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