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Community Blog Content Delivery Network – Part 3: Usage Scenarios

Content Delivery Network – Part 3: Usage Scenarios

Part 3 of this 6-part series discusses the usage scenarios associated with the Content Delivery Network (CDN).

By Shantanu Kaushik

Part 2 of this series discussed the features and benefits of Alibaba Cloud CDN. We also discussed how Alibaba Cloud provides deeper service integration for CDN with other Alibaba Cloud services to help build a more stable, available, and robust solution.

In this article, we will discuss the different usage scenarios that require a Content Delivery Network. Then, we will compare Dynamic CDN and Secure CDN services.

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Usage Scenarios

Alibaba Cloud CDN improves and maintains content availability levels amidst large traffic amounts or hardware issues since it is based on a distributed network with multiple redundant edge or CDN nodes handling multiple data copies. The distributed nature of the architecture ensures a certain zone or region will be affected by any failures. Let's take a look at some of the most important usage scenarios associated with Alibaba Cloud CDN.

Working With Massive Content

Businesses depend on content movement efficiency between the source and the user. Delivering content as fast and reliably as possible are the two goals of a CDN. Alibaba Cloud accelerates the content delivery cycle by optimizing content delivery that involves large files to be transmitted. The chart below shows the architecture related to this scenario:

2

Alibaba Cloud CDN provides acceleration for files larger than 20MB. If a client request wants to access a file that is more than the prescribed limit, Alibaba Cloud CDN accelerates the delivery of these files. It encompasses APKs for a game installation, compressed file types that contain software update packages, audio, video, and more.

In this scenario, Alibaba Cloud CDN utilizes the Server Load Balancer (SLB) and Object Storage Service (OSS) to accelerate the total process, including request handling, locating the file, and file delivery using the closest edge node. This acceleration process saves a lot of time and bandwidth.

Scenario Highlights:

  • Overcoming Internet speed woes where a user cannot download larger files
  • The website content is exposed to potential vulnerabilities that pose a higher risk.
  • Decreases the total storage and compute-related expenses
  • Uninterrupted downloads despite unstable network conditions
  • Cut down on bandwidth expenses considerably

Working With Website Data

Alibaba Cloud CDN is an enterprise solution that handles large-scale data but also caters to small websites. Most websites contain various files, such as images, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and a lot more. Alibaba Cloud CDN helps you accelerate the delivery of these files (content) to present a faster access cycle for your users.

The chart below shows the architecture related to Alibaba Cloud CDN with image and website data handling. Unlike the previous scenario, this scenario depicts smaller file sizes.

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Alibaba Cloud CDN can accelerate this type of workload, including any website with a massive amount of static content. Alibaba Cloud CDN can help you accelerate your content delivery by distributing static resources from the dynamic ones.

In this scenario, the static data is transmitted and cached at the CDN nodes globally, and the data is presented to the user from the closest geographical node. Here, Alibaba Cloud Object Storage Service (OSS) is for storage and provides highly accelerated access times, so content is presented to the user seamlessly.

Solution Highlights:

  • Sometimes there are issues related to image rendering. The images are not produced properly on the user's screen. Alibaba Cloud solves this issue related to image optimization by compressing them according to the user's display parameters.
  • Alibaba Cloud CDN ensures the website is still available during any mishaps with the origin server and can deliver the static content stored on the CDN nodes.
  • A website can become slow while displaying content directly from the origin. When implementing a CDN, the latency between request and content delivery is very low. This scenario achieves performance improvements.
  • Alibaba Cloud CDN optimizes cross-region performance easily with multiple CDN nodes deployed worldwide.

CDN for Video Streaming

There are a growing number of web portals that enable audio and video streaming services. Alibaba Cloud CDN can help accelerate this type of multimedia content easily. If your website offers an on-demand audio and video streaming service, or you are hosting an application that streams audio and video files, you can deploy Alibaba Cloud CDN to accelerate content delivery.

Alibaba Cloud introduced ApsaraVideo for VOD. Alibaba Cloud upgraded this product based on the same content delivery principles to make it an independent solution to cater to on-demand audio and video streaming. With ApsaraVideo for VOD, you can:

  • Upload audio and video files
  • Download audio video files
  • Manage media resources
  • Enable automatic transcoding
  • Accelerate content delivery

Solution Highlights:

  • Seamless and smooth delivery of video content without any errors or stalling
  • ApsaraVideo for VOD provides on-the-fly filtering of illicit content. This helps with moderation scenarios and quick reviews.
  • You can easily apply for copyright protection on your audio and video files to ward-off illegal content distribution.
  • Provides quick and automatic transcoding, storage, delivery, and playback of the content without executing each task individually

Wrapping Up

Alibaba Cloud CDN provides an all-around content delivery practice that provides ultra-high performance and stability. Multiple usage scenarios allow compatibility in almost any deployment where that needs a content delivery network. In Part 4 of this series, we will discuss CDN and Dynamic CDN (DCDN).

Upcoming Articles

  1. Content Delivery Network – Part 4: Dynamic Route for CDN
  2. Content Delivery Network – Part 5: DCDN Usage
  3. Content Delivery Network – Part 6: Secure CDN
Networking content delivery network Dynamic Content Delivery Network Secure Content Delivery Network Apsaravideo for VOD
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Content Delivery Network – Part 2: Benefits and Features

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