Future-Proofing Your CDN: Why Infrastructure and Network Considerations Matter
Content Marketing Manager, Fastly
A CDN is more than great performance (although performance is very important!). But when considering what your business needs from a CDN you need to dig a little deeper into the infrastructure and network that it runs on. The technology that your CDN runs on must be able to scale with the needs of your business and not be a bottleneck that restricts the company’s growth.
The performance and feature set a CDN can offer has hard limitations based on the technology, architecture, and software of the network it runs on. This can be important for its performance right now, but even more important if it will impede its ability to grow with you and continue to offer the services you need in the future. The internet continues to evolve quickly, and user expectations for the performance, safety, and reliability of their internet and streaming experiences grow as well. The cost of switching vendors is significant, so it’s important to choose one that will meet your needs for the long term.
Why your CDN’s infrastructure is important
Here are some ways you can ask about the modernity, limitations, and technical debt of a CDN network. The architecture and network design should be modern, using technologies that allow the network to run on fewer, more powerful, and more efficient points of presence (POPs) rather than running many underpowered POPs inefficiently. The network infrastructure should be fully software-defined so that no additional latency is introduced by hardware components like load balancers or routers that can’t be fully controlled or optimized. This is also critical for future growth because a software-defined network means that every single function can be updated, upgraded, and optimized as the needs of the customers and the internet change over time.
Shopping for a new CDN? Navigate the landscape of solutions with our must-have guide.
Operating all functions and products on a single global network is another important sign because of the efficiency of only having to maintain and evolve one global network. If some features sit on different networks, then their costs for maintaining and updating their networks is divided, diluted, and more expensive. Beyond that, hopping between networks introduces more latency. Performance may be slower, innovation will be slower, and the costs from all of this inefficiency will be passed on to the customers.
Lastly, the platform should handle many things on behalf of the customer, like adopting the most advanced, efficient, and secure protocols. Right now this includes examples like HTTP3, QUIC, and TLS 1.3, but there should also be a guarantee to proactively migrate to the newest, fastest, and safest options to continually provide better service without requiring effort from customers.
Getting the most out of your CDN
A CDN built on modern architecture with a unified platform can greatly improve visibility and availability, reduce latency, and enhance performance. If you’re in the market for a new CDN or looking to asses what options are currently available – check out our all-encompassing Definitive CDN Buyer’s Guide. It contains insights on performance, real-time visibility, configurability and so much more!
Provide your customers with the best possible digital experience with a CDN that is reliable, secure, and fast. Otherwise, you may be stuck with the difficult challenges of poor performance, high costs, and slow websites or apps.
