Author Archives: Chris

CDN Security
25 Mar 2019

Securing Access to your CDN Content

Securing access to your CDN content is a requirement every website operator may need to consider at some point. Depending on the nature of the material you provide, you may not want to share it with unauthorized parties. In other instances, you might need to protect your digital rights, or there may be some other business case that requires you to limit or restrict access to the information you store on a Content Delivery Network (CDN). There are various ways [...]
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
11 Mar 2019

The Pros and Cons of an Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP)

AMP is an acronym for the Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) project. It is an open source initiative launched by Google and Twitter that increases the loading speed for web pages on mobile devices. At its core AMP is a stripped-down form of HTML, effectively making it a web page designed to be extremely lightweight and fast loading. It derives its speed advantage over regular web pages by limiting the number of tags allowed on an HTML page. It also [...]
CDN performance
25 Feb 2019

How to Test Your CDN’s Performance

CDN performance is a vital metric. After all, the primary purpose of subscribing to a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service is to enhance the user experience of your site visitors. By improving the page load times of your website, you not only improve customer satisfaction but also gain a crucial advantage in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Although CDNs do offer other benefits such as load balancing and reduced bandwidth costs, speed and performance are the core services these platforms [...]
HTTP/3 Evolution
11 Feb 2019

HTTP/3 – The Next Evolution

HTTP/3 will be the next evolution in the protocol that changed the world. From humble beginnings in 1991 with the release of HTTP/0.9 to the current standard of HTTP/2, the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) has transformed both business and society forever. HTTP has seen very few version changes over the years. The release of HTTP/1.1 in 1999 remained the standard version for 16 years until HTTP/2 became the new convention in 2015. However, with the continually evolving demands of the web, the [...]
CDN Security
04 Feb 2019

The Top Threats in Cloud Computing

Threats that could compromise the security of your cloud environment consist of both universal and cloud-specific risks. If you examine the Cloud Security Alliance report on the 12 biggest threats to cloud computing, it includes elements such as system vulnerabilities and malicious insiders. Security issues such as these two examples have been prevalent in non-cloud computing environments for decades. Although some stated cloud security issues may be universal, you still need to follow industry best practice to ensure your environment is secure. Even though the Top 12 [...]
CDN security
28 Jan 2019

Securing Your Origin Server

Securing your origin server in today’s digitally-driven online world is vital. With cybersecurity threats growing in both number and sophistication, attackers can compromise an unprotected server in minutes leaving you and your visitors at risk. In an ever-evolving threat landscape, it is crucial that you take proactive steps to ensure your site is safe. Securing your origin server from possible compromise requires you to perform several administrative functions that protect your website, server, and data. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) improve the performance and security of your website. [...]
virtualization vs containerization
14 Jan 2019

Virtualization vs. Containerization – Which one do I use?

Virtualization and containerization have been and remain popular technology infrastructure deployment models. Both allow you to run multiple applications in an isolated environment on a host operating system. With virtualization being the older of the two technologies, it owns a large footprint of the cloud infrastructure market. However, containerization has become a trendy alternative in recent years. Every technology giant including Microsoft, Google, and IBM support and have solutions that leverage it. When it comes to provisioning infrastructure for [...]
CDN performance
17 Dec 2018

CDN Optimization – 5 Ways to Optimize for Performance

CDN optimization is a vital task in ensuring you get the most out of your service. It also ensures your users enjoy the best possible experience driving more traffic to your site. Even though a Content Delivery Network (CDN) exists to improve the performance of your website, ensuring the CDN performs as it should is a shared responsibility. CDN providers are responsible for managing the caching servers, networks, load balancers, and other related infrastructure needed to deliver your content [...]
cdn edge
27 Nov 2018

Edge Computing – How CDNs Can Help Deliver IoT Data

CDN Edge solutions are going to become more relevant as IoT continues its impressive growth. With the arrival of 5G, the amount of data that IoT devices create is expected to increase exponentially and will require edge solutions that can store, process, and analyze the data as close to the source as possible. In the world of distributed computing, there are currently two contrary paradigms at play. On the one hand, we see the movement of I.T. workloads and data [...]
HTTP2 CDN
12 Nov 2018

Protecting CDN Content with Token Authentication and URL Signing

Token authentication and URL signing are technologies which help you secure your CDN content. Using these authentication solutions, you can ensure only legitimate users or services are authorized to access and download the content you have placed on your CDN. Typically, web asset administrators use this type of solution to prevent the hotlinking of material, in which a third-party site or service uses your web assets without permission. This unauthorized access can result in your CDN costs increasing or [...]