The Top 10 Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)

Akamai is a global leader in providing security, computing, and online content delivery services. Akamai enables businesses to achieve Zero Trust, prevent ransomware, safeguard applications and APIs, and defend against DDoS attacks. The Akamai Connected Cloud spans over 4,100 locations, across 1,200 networks in 130 countries, and delivers improved scale, capacity, and reach for its users.

Akamai offers a number of content delivery network solutions that provide fast and engaging end user experiences. These solutions help optimize performance and availability, conduct stress tests, manage traffic, and maintain a fast and engaging online experience for users. Akamai specializes in providing consistent user experiences regardless of device or location, helping businesses achieve global scale.

Akamai also delivers consistent video and media streaming experiences for large audiences on any device. These solutions are designed to support large-scale media events for millions of viewers, improve offload and cost efficiency, provide deep insights into performance and user engagement, and offer secure storage capabilities. Overall, Akamai offer leading CDN solutions that help businesses protect their digital presence, enhance user experiences, and securely deliver content worldwide.

Amazon CloudFront is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service designed for high performance, security, and developer convenience. It accelerates distribution of static and dynamic web content through a global network of 550+ Points of Presence (PoPs), ensuring low latency and high transfer speeds. Content is delivered using intelligent routing and automated network mapping, thereby helping to improve user experience.

The service enhances security with traffic encryption and access controls alongside AWS Shield Standard; this protects against DDoS attacks at no additional charge. Amazon CloudFront also offers consolidated requests, customizable pricing options, and no data transfer fees from AWS origins. Users can further optimize content delivery with serverless compute features, balancing cost, performance, and security.

Amazon CloudFront enables various use cases, including fast and secure websites, dynamic content delivery, and APIs for live and on-demand video streaming. It also efficiently distributes software patches, game updates, and IoT Over-The-Air (OTA) updates with automatic scaling and high transfer rates. Overall, Amazon CloudFront is a comprehensive solution for organizations seeking a high-performance CDN service with robust security and developer-friendly features.

Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a global solution designed to enhance the speed and scalability of content delivery, providing an optimal user experience. It is highly efficient for delivering content such as gaming software, firmware updates, IoT endpoints, websites, mobile apps, and streaming media.

By implementing Azure CDN, users can experience improved performance and reduced latency for high-bandwidth content. The CDN works by distributing user requests and directly serving content from edge servers, sending less traffic to the origin point, thereby delivering superior online experiences. Its distributed Points of Presence (PoPs) allow it to handle heavy loads and sudden traffic spikes without additional infrastructure costs or capacity concerns, making it particularly useful for major product launches and global events.

Azure CDN integrates seamlessly with Azure services and offers various security features, including custom domain HTTPS, DDoS mitigation, and advanced rules for blocking requests or validating users. Geo-filtering ensures content delivery is restricted to specific regions as needed.

With straightforward billing, Azure CDN is easy to set up and manage, providing an efficient, reliable, and secure platform for modern businesses to scale their content delivery and meet the demands of a global user base.

CDN77 is a content delivery network used by high-demand websites and apps, serving over a billion users monthly. CDN77 handles over 5 million HTTP requests per second, and its 130 Tbps network spans across six continents to accommodate high-volume traffic and spikes.

Key features of CDN77 include a robust global network backbone with direct access to over 3,000 local ISPs, 300+ PNIs, and 15 top-level transit providers. The network has a daily traffic peak of 50 Tbps and an average cache hit ratio of 98%. CDN77 emphasizes a custom approach to provide tailored solutions with flexible pricing and 24/7 in-house technical support for optimal service and client satisfaction.

CDN77 offers a range of features to improve performance, security, and user experience, such as custom rules and configurations, flexible development for custom scenarios, and dedicated CDN infrastructure. Secure protocols, including SSL/TLS certificates and tokens, as well as content protection measures like hotlink protection, geolocation protection, and IP protection, ensure content delivery remains secure.

Cloudflare CDN is a content delivery network service offering both static and dynamic caching to improve website and app performance. This service is included for free with all Cloudflare application service plans. With a global network spanning over 310 cities and 120 countries, Cloudflare CDN operates within approximately 50 milliseconds of roughly 95% of the Internet-connected population worldwide. Cloudflare improves load times performance for web and mobile users, while reduced bandwidth costs and minimizing hosting fees by decreasing requests to the origin server.

Advanced features of Cloudflare CDN include granular visibility into cache, allowing users to have improved cache-hit ratios and actionable insights. This feature also includes dashboard views for website performance optimization and the ability to filter by hostnames or see a list of top URLs that missed cache. Cloudflare CDN offers support for BYOIP (Bring Your Own IPs), enabling customers to have their IPs announced by Cloudflare and attach them to the Cloudflare services of their choice. Additionally, it supports the latest generation of the web protocol, HTTP/3, which uses QUIC for accelerated delivery of traffic and improved connection reliability and security.

Cloudflare is trusted by 30% of Fortune 1000 companies and provides access to features such as universal SSL certificate, unmetered DDoS protection, and Web Application Firewall (WAF). Enterprise features include 24/7/365 multi-channel support, a 100% uptime guarantee with 25x reimbursement SLA, predictable flat-rate pricing for usage-based products, and advanced controls and management options.

Edgio Delivery is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) designed to provide secure content to any device. It focuses on streaming video and file downloads with exceptional quality and reliability on a large scale. Edgio Delivery’s global edge network accelerates content delivery and features over 300 Points of Presence with a capacity of 250+ Tbps. The network maintains more than 7,000 global interconnections to ensure optimized content delivery routes.

The platform offers various control features such as Edge Control, Rules Engine, and Terraform integration to manage delivery configurations. These tools enable businesses to manipulate and store data for optimal performance, tailoring how content is distributed based on precise specifications. Edgio’s data analytics help in understanding consumer preferences, improving delivery performance, and reducing costs. The platform’s real-time log delivery, statistics, and custom reports provide valuable insights to make informed decisions.

Edgio also focuses on security measures, protecting web infrastructure from DDoS attacks through features like Origin Shield and Web Application Firewall (WAF). The platform detects and prevents application layer attacks, filters unwanted traffic, and mitigates potential web server overloads. Overall, Edgio Delivery offers an efficient CDN solution for businesses requiring secure and high-performing content delivery on a global scale.

Fastly Content Delivery Network is a CDN provider aimed at helping businesses deliver fast and personalized web and mobile experiences. It offers real-time visibility, logging integrations, and support for agile DevOps practices. Fastly’s highly configurable CDN allows for easy modification of content caching and API settings, facilitating faster content changes and stress-free rollbacks.

The platform incorporates built-in security features such as DDoS protection, next-gen WAF and TLS encryption, giving users a secure environment to build and run applications. Fastly CDN’s design offers rapid content purging, higher cache hit ratios, better performance, and cost-saving efficiencies. These features contribute to improved user experiences, higher engagement, seamless scaling, and reduced infrastructure costs.

Fastly’s product offerings include streaming media delivery, TLS encryption, dedicated IP addresses, and support for multiple connection methods. Additionally, it provides standard, gold, and enterprise support plans, catering to varying customer needs. Key features of the platform include configurability, real-time control, and safety measures such as grace mode and auto-healing to ensure optimal performance and security.

Gcore CDN is a next-generation content delivery network that aims to make web applications fast and responsive for global audiences. With low latency worldwide, Gcore CDN enables users to access apps as if the hosting is located in their region. Dynamic content acceleration speeds up the delivery time of generated content, making web applications more responsive.

Gcore CDN’s global network consists of over 150 Points of Presence (PoPs) and 110 Tbps network capacity, contributing to an average latency of 30 ms worldwide. They handle 2 million requests per second and have an average cache hit ratio of 85%. Their infrastructure supports both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols, and they offer a wide range of features including Anycast and GeoDNS routing, edge rules, custom SSL certificates, extended API, Terraform and Grafana support, and two-factor authentication.

Ideal for use with web applications, e-commerce, games, software assets, and video streaming, Gcore CDN offers solutions such as improved website speed, instant playback, and robust protection against traffic surges and DDoS attacks. Additionally, their Image Stack tool helps simplify workflow for website owners and developers by converting images to WebP or AVIF formats, controlling image quality, resizing, and cropping images.

Gcore CDN also provides built-in web security features, including SSL/TLS encryption, advanced access policies, L3, L4, and L7 DDoS mitigation, and next-generation Web Application Firewall (WAF). They offer a pay-as-you-grow pricing model, with plans for personal websites, small businesses, professional web projects, and large online services.

Google Cloud CDN and Media CDN are content delivery network platforms that help cache regularly accessed static content closer to users. Cloud CDN is optimized for serving both static and dynamic latency-sensitive web assets, such as CSS, JavaScript, HTML, and image files. Media CDN is built for streaming video and large file downloads, using YouTube’s infrastructure. The combination of both CDN platforms helps improve user performance, reduce origin infrastructure resource usage, and lower network delivery costs.

Cloud CDN and Media CDN are compatible with any HTTP-capable origin, including Google Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, and Google Kubernetes Engine, as well as origins outside Google Cloud. These platforms also integrate with Google Cloud Armor for in-depth security, and they provide fine-grain cache controls for customizable caching behavior. The platforms also offer advanced HTTP routing capabilities, real-time logging and metrics, and support for modern protocols, such as TLS version 1.3 and QUIC.

By utilizing Google’s global edge network, Cloud CDN and Media CDN can efficiently bring content closer to users, reducing latency, cost, and load on backend servers. Common use cases include serving static content, dynamic content, video streaming, complex gaming, and software downloads. Cloud CDN and Media CDN use a pricing model based on bandwidth and HTTP/HTTPS requests.

Imperva Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a comprehensive platform designed to securely deliver applications globally. It incorporates content caching, load balancing, and failover features to provide an enhanced website experience. By employing machine learning, Imperva CDN efficiently caches dynamically-generated pages while ensuring content freshness, which results in reduced bandwidth consumption and improved cache utilization.

With advanced caching, content optimization techniques, and a global network of data centers, the Imperva CDN guarantees fast, secure content delivery and improved connection speeds. It caters to a wide variety of applications, including modern and legacy applications, third-party applications, APIs, and microservices. As a part of the Imperva WAAP Security Platform, the CDN also safeguards against the latest security threats, ensuring a safer website experience.

In addition, Imperva CDN offers easy rule management for customizations tailored to specific environments. It enables decisions based on visitor and request attributes without changing the user-facing URL. Imperva redefines load balancing with cloud-based local server load balancers, global server load balancers, and automatic site failover options, leading to greater operational efficiency.

Overall, Imperva CDN enhances website and app performance, delivering faster load times, reduced latency, improved dynamic content delivery, and lower bandwidth costs. Stand out features include advanced caching, content optimization, custom rules, load balancing, automatic failover, and automated security solutions.