Comparative analysis of three types of CDN vendors: Technologically innovative ones lead the way

Preface: With the explosion of live video, the rise of short videos, the rapid growth of OTT TV and the rapid development of Internet video, the CDN market has grown at a rate of more than 40%, and everyone's demand for technology has become more demanding. At the same time, the lowering of the entry threshold of CDN technology has brought opportunities for manufacturers to enter the market in a big way. For a while, the CDN market was in chaos and it was very lively!

As the CDN market gradually matures, it has become a three-legged race. The first camp is the Internet giants represented by Alibaba and Tencent, which have huge ecological resources and latecomer advantages. The second camp is the traditional conservative manufacturers represented by Wangsu and ChinaCache, which have a large market share and technical accumulation. In the past two or three years, they have almost been living off their old capital. The third camp is the emerging manufacturers represented by Yunfan Accelerator and NetMind Technology. It is worth mentioning that Yunfan Accelerator was labeled as an industry dark horse and disruptor in 2016. It often does not follow the trend and has its own strategic deployment.

Fierce competition is always beneficial to CDN users. How to find the CDN service provider that suits you among many? Let us analyze and compare the Internet giants represented by Alibaba Cloud, the traditional ones represented by Wangsu, and the emerging ones represented by Yunfan Accelerator, to help companies that need CDN services, especially those entrepreneurial companies with limited funds, find the CDN service that suits them.

Alibaba Cloud CDN with rich resources

Alibaba Cloud covers more than 30 countries around the world and 34 provincial regions in China. It has more than 500 global nodes and a total bandwidth of 40T. From the perspective of comprehensive strength, it is absolutely strong, but everything has two sides. BAT itself has network services with huge traffic consumption. It is obvious that self-built CDN must first serve itself. Therefore, whether it will cause pressure on third-party customers during network peak periods such as Double Eleven is still an unknown.

The picture shows Alibaba Cloud CDN official website

In terms of fees, Alibaba Cloud CDN charges traffic packages, which are divided into three types: entry-level, advanced, and combined enhanced. The relevant parameter requirements are also listed in detail. Users can choose according to their needs. Overall, the price is relatively low. In addition, Alibaba Cloud has a 100G free CDN acceleration service for new users, but it is said that it is difficult to get it. The free service is more of a marketing tool.

Wangsu, a company focused on enterprise services

Wangsu Technology, a veteran company in the CDN industry, has more than 30 Class A IDC computer rooms. It has cooperated with the three major operators (China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom) and two proprietary networks (China Education and Research Computer Network and China Science and Technology Network), and has rationally deployed more than 500 CDN acceleration nodes across the country, with a bandwidth reserve of more than 7T.

Wangsu offers a variety of pricing models: monthly traffic packages, value packages, and annual packages. Users can choose the right package based on their business type. In addition to the ten packages, Wangsu also offers traffic billing and bandwidth billing, but its price is definitely expensive in the CDN industry. Of course, users of different sizes have different bargaining power. Wangsu is famous for its professional customized services, which are more attractive to large Internet companies, but may not be so friendly to small startups.

The picture shows Wangsu Technology's official website

In terms of special features, Wangsu has ten core technologies independently developed, including intelligent load balancing technology, automatic routing technology, task tracking management technology, traffic management technology, distributed massive file storage technology, and large-volume file rapid distribution technology, seven of which are original innovations and three are integrated innovations. However, these technologies are all traditional needs and are not adequately supporting the emerging mobile Internet industry.

Yunfan Accelerator mainly promotes streaming media and shared CDN

Yunfan Accelerator adopts a completely independently developed CDN architecture. Yunfan Accelerator has more than 200 CDN acceleration nodes around the world, covering more than 85% of cities in the country as well as the United States, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other places, with a bandwidth storage of 3T. However, the application of its shared CDN technology allows users to actually have the experience of a ***CDN node.

The picture shows the official website of Yunfan Accelerator

Traditional CDN solutions have high node construction costs and high broadband costs; while P2P technology has low costs, but due to the poor network transmission speed of user terminals, it leads to large network delays and increased freezing rates, affecting the user viewing experience. Yunfan Accelerator pioneered CDN+P2P technology, which fully integrates CDN and P2P technologies, giving priority to CDN traffic to ensure service effects, and P2P to save traffic costs, solving cost and user experience issues. On the basis of ensuring high-quality, stable, and high-speed image quality transmission, it reduces broadband costs for customers by up to 30%-80%.

Yunfan Accelerator can also provide a complete set of solutions for cross-platform and cross-terminal streaming media playback, covering cloud storage, page acceleration, download acceleration, streaming acceleration, transcoding, slicing, recording, big data analysis, service monitoring, player engine and other value-added services. For start-ups and users in the broadcasting and television industry, the difficulty of launching new services is greatly reduced, which is one of the reasons why Yunfan Accelerator has signed contracts with several broadcasting and television companies in just two years.

The development and growth of Internet companies often do not come from a head-on confrontation with traditional advantage manufacturers, but rather from being able to seize the trend of technological and application changes. As far as the CDN industry is concerned, new application scenarios will change the market landscape.

***, interactive live broadcasting. This part of the interactive live broadcasting market was extremely popular in 2016, but gradually became rational in 2017 and entered the stage of accumulated user scale maturity. The disappearance of the demographic dividend has accelerated the competition among platforms for high-quality content and communication channels, and commercial costs have continued to increase. In order to improve its own competitiveness, Yunfan Accelerator deeply analyzed the live broadcasting needs in different fields and launched multi-scenario video solutions such as live broadcasting + education, live broadcasting + news, and live broadcasting + finance and economics.

Second, in the field of new media such as OTT. The entry of traditional video websites such as iQiyi and Youku and Internet TV into the battle has led to an increasing demand for broadband. Currently, five of the seven OTT licensees have signed cooperation agreements with Yunfan Accelerator, which is a kind of trust.

Third, the field of short videos. The rapid outbreak of short videos has won the favor of the capital market. Using everyone's fragmented time to watch, share and spread an interesting short video caters to the user habits in the mobile Internet era. Miaopai, Kuaishou, Pear Video, Momo's "Moments", Meipai, etc. have become "pigs on the vent". In addition, graphic media such as Toutiao and NetEase News Client have also set foot in short videos, and the market space has further expanded. Although there are some positions, more are joining the battle!

Obviously, for start-ups in these fields, the low-cost advantage brought by Yunfan Acceleration's shared CDN+P2P model and the convenience of the full-platform solution will facilitate the rapid development of the company in the early stage. The reason why traditional CDN companies have declined is that the technology cannot keep up, and they focus on economic benefits while ignoring technological development. The origin of CDN is to solve users' network acceleration needs. It is a purely technology-oriented industry. If there is a lack of technological innovation and no core competitiveness of its own, future development will encounter bottlenecks.

All the focus of an enterprise should be on creating value for customers, which is the value that Yunfan Accelerator has always believed in. It is precisely because of the needs of customers that Yunfan Accelerator can keenly feel the changes in the market and stand firm in the waves. Its self-built CDN has won praise from all sides for its low latency and fast response to customers, and has created a cost-effective shared CDN to help tens of millions of customers realize the realization of deposited assets. Through its expertise in technology, it helps the entire Internet industry and the ancillary industries located on the Internet industry to develop, and ultimately affects the daily lives of ordinary people.