Part 2 of this 6-part series discusses the benefits and features of Alibaba Cloud CDN.
By Shantanu Kaushik
Content comprises everything on the Internet. Everything we do on the Internet centers around exchanging information or content between multiple servers and clients. The network of connected machines serves one purpose of enabling information sharing.
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) sits between the content source and the user to provide a seamless user experience without any service interruptions in data delivery. CDN cuts down a lot of time between user requests and content delivery by caching content on the edge nodes that are geographically closer to the user (the content request source.)
In this article, we will discuss the benefits and features of Alibaba Cloud CDN.
What Does a CDN Offer?
As the name itself suggests, the main job of a CDN is to deliver content to the user. However, there is a lot more to Alibaba Cloud CDN than content delivery. Let’s take a look at the prime benefits and features of Alibaba Cloud CDN:
1. Performance
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Alibaba Cloud CDN provides accelerated content delivery with bandwidth-hogging content, such as audio and video streaming, livestreaming, and large file downloads.
- Alibaba Cloud also introduced Dynamic Route for CDN (DCDN) and Secure Content Delivery Network (SCDN) to provide accelerated content delivery based on various usage scenarios.
- Alibaba Cloud has the most edge (CDN) nodes in Mainland China. Alibaba Cloud has over 500 nodes spread worldwide to facilitate better and more accelerated content delivery.
- Alibaba Cloud CDN provides a superior bandwidth capacity that matches (and sometimes surpasses) the bandwidth capacity of the competition.
- Alibaba Cloud CDN provides a quick response time, enabling a seamless content delivery experience without any delay or performance lapse.
- Alibaba Cloud CDN has an architecture that enables highly efficient memory management with high-performance caching that utilizes load balancing between multiple vCPUs.
- The Content Delivery Network supports ultra-high-performance read and write capabilities by using the state-of-the-art SSD drives on the storage services by Alibaba Cloud.
2. Usage
- Alibaba Cloud provides a handy and easy-to-use CDN console that simplifies Alibaba Cloud CDN management. This console provides a graphical overview that showcases all the Content Delivery Network (CDN) features.
- Alibaba Cloud CDN supports EdgeScript, which can customize all aspects of the CDN service to match your business requirements. This level of customization makes Alibaba Cloud CDN an optimal choice for organizations that want to deploy an adaptive solution quickly.
- Alibaba Cloud CDN provides a highly effective API layer to facilitate rich API operations. You can quickly and easily manage your Alibaba Cloud CDN solution by calling specific APIs. You can follow this link to learn more about the API functions associated with Alibaba Cloud CDN.
- Alibaba Cloud CDN supports application and transport layer load balancing mechanisms and Alibaba Cloud SLB. This advanced Linux Virtual Server (LVS)-based infrastructure provides a highly stable and feature-rich HTTP cache environment.
- Alibaba Cloud CDN is based on a distributed computing environment that utilizes edge nodes for quick content disbursal. This enables added protection from DDoS attacks. DDoS attacks are based on resource hogging, and when you are on a distributed network, the intensity of an attack is highly reduced. Alibaba Cloud also provides an Anti-DDoS basic service free of cost.
3. Service Integration
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Alibaba Cloud SSL certificate service works with Alibaba Cloud CDN to provide digital certificates authorized by certification authorities (CA). These certificates can be obtained within the Alibaba Cloud service structure to enable HTTPS service for better and more secure content delivery.
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ICP Filing is mandatory in China for non-commercial Internet information services and ICP licensing systems for commercial Internet information services. Alibaba Cloud provides an ICP filing service to enable your service segment in Mainland China.
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Cloud Monitor is a service extended to Alibaba Cloud CDN to monitor the entire service as an end-to-end monitoring system. It is highly essential for a service like CDN that transacts with high-fidelity data.
4. Intelligence and Security
- Alibaba Cloud CDN responds seamlessly to any configuration requests you submit. It has an automated system to handle any standardized configuration requests to improve the overall user experience. The whole architecture promotes automation and reduces manual intervention to make the system faster and more efficient.
- Alibaba Cloud CDN works with industry-grade enterprise-level acceleration services that effectively ward-off tampering and data leaks. Alibaba Cloud CDN can force the entire request route to implement HTTPs as a standard protocol by utilizing HTTPS for secured user access and node connectivity.
- Alibaba Cloud CDN and deep learning methodology filters out illicit content. The smart recognition technology helps minimize the risk of user violations.
- Alibaba Cloud CDN supports intelligent popularity calculation to detect which content is mostly resolved and delivered. This accelerates the delivery of that content and makes the entire system more efficient.
- Alibaba Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN) supports a wide array of anti-leech and security features based on:
- HTTP Referrer
- User Agent Headers
- IP Addresses
- URL Authentication
- Whitelist
- Blacklist
Wrapping Up
In this article, we discussed the prime benefits and features related to Alibaba Cloud CDN. In Part 3 of this series, we will discuss the usage scenarios associated with the Content Delivery Network (CDN).
Upcoming Articles
- Content Delivery Network – Part 3: Usage Scenarios
- Content Delivery Network – Part 4: Dynamic Route for CDN
- Content Delivery Network – Part 5: DCDN Usage
- Content Delivery Network – Part 6: Secure CDN
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