CDN network development trend: Accelerate the integration and innovative development with new technologies

In the process of development, CDN networks have been constantly innovating in computing power, storage capacity, network architecture, content deployment, etc., absorbing new ideas and technologies, and continuously improving CDN service capabilities and service quality. With the emergence of cloud computing, HTTP/2 protocol, SDN/NFV and other technologies, CDN vendors will also begin to explore the combination of these new technologies with CDN networks.

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The "Content Distribution Network (CDN) White Paper (2015)" released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology points out the global CDN development trend: CDN is accelerating its integration with new technologies and emerging Internet technologies are being rapidly deployed.

CDN and cloud computing complement each other and greatly improve resource utilization

Through the distributed platform of cloud computing, as well as key technologies such as business storage sharing, node resource pooling, content intelligent perception, and hierarchical caching, high-traffic content centers and CDN nodes can be deployed on the cloud, greatly improving the node storage capacity and resource utilization of CDN, providing intelligent traffic scheduling from a global perspective, and improving the bandwidth elasticity of CDN services, which can not only meet the bandwidth needs of users during peak access periods, but also avoid wasting resources by building a large number of CDN nodes during idle access periods.

Liang Shipeng, senior director of enterprise sales consulting in North China of Akamai Information Technology Co., Ltd., once said that CDN and cloud computing are a pair of inseparable twin brothers. Akamai has actually expanded the boundaries of the cloud. At present, our CDN is deployed in more than 110 countries around the world, including more than 1,700 operators, with a total of about 2,700 nodes and more than 20,000 servers, which truly extends the boundaries of the cloud to the place closest to the user. According to our statistics, more than 90% of users can find Qingyun's servers in the same local operator and access the CDN network nearby to download content.

At present, international Internet and cloud computing giants such as Amazon and Google and domestic Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu have deployed CDN technology in cloud services and provide commercial CDN services together with cloud services.

CDN supports HTTP/2 protocol to improve network efficiency and service capabilities

It is understood that at the 2016 Hangzhou Yunqi Conference, Alibaba Cloud announced that the Extreme CDN 6.0 service officially supports HTTP/2, which can increase access speed by 68%. It can provide enterprises with Taobao-level network distribution capabilities while meeting the massive demands for security, reliability, and high performance.

In 2016, Taobao became the first website to adopt HTTP/2. Under long-term and large business volume, the Alibaba Cloud CDN team has conducted a lot of verification on HTTP/2. The transition from HTTP1.1 to HTTP/2 means that a secure, reliable, and high-speed CDN era has arrived. At present, Internet security has become the focus of the industry.

According to publicly disclosed data, more than 90% of apps in China do not use HTTPS (HTTP/2 mainly runs on HTTPS) to use encrypted connections, and even fewer enable full-site encryption. CDN support for HTTP/2 can effectively prevent such incidents from happening, and can prevent customer content from being hijacked, tampered with, and stolen, ensuring the security of communications.

In addition to security, CDN services supporting HTTP/2 also bring rapid performance improvements to enterprises. Professional agency tests show that when using HTTP/2 CDN services, page loading time is reduced by 30% to 50%. For many websites and apps with large traffic and high QPS, this can greatly improve user stickiness and experience.

SDN/NFV significantly improves CDN network resource management efficiency and elasticity

Although hardware will continue to maintain its important position in network infrastructure, SDN will still symbolize the direction of the network industry's shift from hardware to software in the long run. For providers, this will indicate that a business model based on software and services is being established, and traditional thinking should be changed and transferred. For enterprises, this will mean that the perception of application delivery will affect more cooperation and a more commercial orientation.

As for CDN, the rapid development of SDN will also bring changes to the traditional strategies centered on node layout, cache design, load balancing, etc. The emergence and official commercialization of SDN and NFV will significantly improve the resource management efficiency and elasticity of traditional CDN networks. Network virtualization technology aims to ensure connectivity between different cache resources, and computing and storage resource virtualization technology separates cache from dedicated hardware. Cache capacity can be increased to existing data centers in the entire network, or deployed in a more cost-effective way to new micro data centers closer to the edge of subscribers, enabling rapid deployment of content cache to meet different traffic requirements.

It is reported that in addition to Akamai using SDN to create the ElasticCDN business, which greatly reduced the time and cost of business deployment, Fastly also combined SDN switches to build an SDN+CDN virtual service, allowing users to control the source code and upgrades themselves, thereby freeing themselves from manufacturer binding.

At present, a new CDN ecosystem has begun to be built, and the trend of CDN+Security+SDN+Bare-Metal has become the direction and guidance for the transformation of various CDN service providers.

With the restructuring of the entire global CDN ecosystem and the continuous innovation of technology, as an industry whose technology and ecology change greatly every year, CDN service providers have been committed to exploring better ways to provide users with a better experience. Because on the road of scientific and technological innovation, there is no smooth road. Only by continuous exploration and courage to innovate can we avoid being eliminated by the tide of history.