Energy Constraints Delay CDN PoP Deployments

Energy constraints in data centers are delaying new CDN PoP deployments in regions like North America and Europe. Limited power availability hinders providers’ ability to expand capacity, impacting throughput for growing traffic demands. This affects content delivery scalability. Providers are exploring renewable-powered edge nodes to meet sustainability mandates and overcome energy caps. These nodes reduce reliance on traditional grids, enabling new PoPs without increasing carbon footprints. This is critical for maintaining low latency in high-demand areas. ...

August 16, 2025

Indian Railways Boosts E-Ticketing with CDN Upgrades

Indian Railways has upgraded its e-ticketing platform with CDN enhancements, achieving a record 31,800 tickets booked per minute on May 22, 2025. This boost improves access for millions of users, reducing latency during peak booking periods. The upgrade underscores CDNs’ role in high-traffic public services. The system leverages CDN caching and AI-driven traffic management to handle surges at PoP locations. Enhanced origin shielding protects against unauthorized access, ensuring stable performance. The 31,800 tickets-per-minute figure reflects a significant capacity increase, critical for user satisfaction. ...

August 16, 2025

Multi-CDN Adoption Grows for Enhanced Reliability

Multi-CDN strategies are gaining momentum as businesses seek to avoid service disruptions seen in past CDN outages. Companies like Amazon and Walmart use multiple providers, such as Akamai, Cloudflare, and Fastly, to ensure redundancy. This approach maintains content availability during provider-specific failures. Multi-CDN setups distribute traffic across several CDNs, reducing reliance on a single PoP or origin. By leveraging BGP routing and real-time failover, these systems minimize downtime. For e-commerce, this translates to consistent user experiences, even under high traffic. ...

August 16, 2025

OTT Platforms In-Source CDNs, Challenging Providers

Major OTT platforms like Netflix, YouTube, and Disney+ are increasingly building their own CDN infrastructure, reducing dependence on third-party providers. This shift challenges traditional CDNs by shrinking their revenue from large clients. It highlights the need for providers to target midsize publishers. In-sourcing involves deploying proprietary PoP networks and origin servers optimized for streaming. This allows OTTs to control latency and costs, achieving lower p95 delivery times. However, it requires significant capital investment. The trend pushes CDN providers to offer specialized services like managed Multi-CDN orchestration. Midsize businesses benefit from these tailored solutions, which improve availability without in-house infrastructure. ...

August 16, 2025

Cache-Control & TTLs: Getting Caching Right

Caching is one of the simplest ways to improve delivery. A cache saves a copy of a response so it can be served without a round trip to the origin. The core control surface is the Cache-Control header and the time-to-live (TTL). This guide explains how freshness and validation work, which directives do what, and how to choose sane defaults that fit real sites and APIs. Freshness vs validation A cache serves a response when it is fresh. Freshness comes from an explicit lifetime such as max-age or from an older Expires date. After freshness ends, a cache either revalidates or fetches again. ...

August 15, 2025

What Is Multi-CDN? Fit, Benefits, and Trade-offs

Synopsis This chapter defines multi-CDN and explains when the approach improves service outcomes. It describes benefits in availability, performance, and vendor risk, and it outlines added complexity in operations, security, and cost. A simple decision framework and a migration overview provide a practical start point. Definition Multi-CDN is the practice of serving the same property through more than one content delivery network under a single control plane. Requests are routed to one of several providers based on policy. Policies consider jurisdiction, health, performance, and cost in that order of precedence. Correctness and user experience remain the primary constraints. ...