A content delivery network, or CDN, is a geographically distributed network of data centers and proxy servers. A great network should present available and high performance to end-users by distributing services accordingly.
That helps each user worldwide, regardless of their location, to see the same quality content without taking it forever to load. Therefore, a CDN is a network of servers whose purpose is to present content faster to its users.
Part of building a good OTT platform is to have a great CDN. Are you in the process of making one? How can you pick the best CDN to deliver your video? This post talks about what is CDN and the essential tips for choosing the right CDN to deliver video content. Keep reading to find out more.
What is CDN?
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Many organizations engage the services of a CDN software to offer the best CDN video streaming experience. As briefly stated earlier, CDNs serve as distributed servers linked via private fiber links that offer digital content like video to the user through service provider last-mile connections.
That strategy lessens latency or slow response times and eases the overall traffic load on a customer’s network. Simply put, the closer the CDN server to a particular user, the quicker the content will be sent. On top of that, CDNs offer protection against huge traffic surges, like when viewers watch a live streaming event or check games scores online.
Further, CDNs having private backbones prevent traffic congestion on the public internet.
Nonetheless, it is simple to become frustrated when considering CDN providers for excellent video delivery. You will find a huge amount of options available in the market as well as decision-makers to keep a few things in mind when selecting the ideal one.
Tips for Choosing the Right CDN
Remember that CDNs are a highly dependable way to upgrade your services or application’s accessibility to access a smooth internet connection. Nonetheless, the process involved in selecting the proper CDN provider is quite challenging and complicated.
A great CDN provider must be able to present the following essential services:
- Significantly lessen the rate of latency caused by geographical distance
- Be able to offer huge payloads
- Have the capability to present small files constantly
- Always be dependable
- Be faster than your original network provider
Aside from the following features, to present small files continuously, which are anticipated from each CDN provider, you should consider the following:
Here are some of the practical tips you need to bear in mind when selecting the right CDN:
1. Check the DNS Response Time
A few CDN providers have complicated DNS setups, which could substantially slow down performance. That often looks like a fast wait time, which gets offset by a slower DNS response time. Thus, end-user and last-mile DNS performance could differ from the tests run in the backbone.
Meanwhile, backbone monitoring depends on resolvers that are close to the machine running the tests. There could be different irregularities for big broadcasters and enterprise customers, and the provider might be slow as a single CDN could be overloaded.
2. Consider the Location of your Audience
The most crucial thing for a business is to make sure your customers or target audience have the same quality experience along with your video content, no matter where they are located in the world.
How well can the selected solution scale with your business? Also, do you have a substantial end-user presence in India, Korea, or Spain? It’s important that you make sure the CDN provider you pick has Points-of-Presence that is geographically located to reach dispersed and global audiences.
3. Check Content Security
Are you licensing rights-protected video content? Then you must enforce the necessary rights agreement. It will help if you go for a CDN with an integrated DRM supporting Apple, Microsoft, and Google systems.
What if safeguarding content from being intercepted in transit is your main priority? Then you should go for a CDN that could support TLS/SSL encryption. On top of that, it is essential that your CDN provider could offer improved, secure content delivery to deliver total safety against all types of attacks.
4. Choose the Appropriate type of Service for Video Delivery
You will find two types of categories of streaming video workflows: video-on-demand (VoD) and live streaming. The most popular approaches to live streaming that are widely utilized these days are MPEG-DASH and HLS chunk streaming.
These two offer delivery latency, which could not be acceptable for other use cases like adding viewer interactivity with video streaming. Meanwhile, for VOD, modern audiences expect an immediate response. Also, it has tolerance for rebuffers or delays. Choose a high-capacity CDN with an established capacity to offer streaming live video and VOD with less rebuffering.
5. Personalized Content Delivery
A CDN partner who enables you to modify at the edge could bring substantial value to your business. It is good to look for a CND that provides control over each aspect of handling like performance optimizations, caching rules, failover behavior, edge logic, performance optimizations, and more. You also need to ensure that the CDN solution you pick supports flexibility and customization, not to mention it has an important network in place to facilitate that functionality.
6. Transparency
From a business point of view, it makes sense to choose a CDN solution that’s simple to do business with and transparent at the same time. The best CDN provides teams with a breadth of experience and depth of expertise. It should have a team who have streamed and presented the internet’s major trends.
The best CDN can offer professionally handled video delivery and broadcast services with support proactive and round-the-globe monitoring. It also should offer its customers access to skilled and expert specialists in mobile, video, and streaming wherever and whenever necessary.
To sum up, make sure you know the fundamentals, whether you are conducting live streaming, on-demand, or even both. It will help if you understand the trends and engage with partners you can easily trust.