Content Delivery Networks became an integral part of all kind of businesses, that work online. That is why the use of service, providing by variety of CDN companies, growths year by year. They use CDNs to optimizetheir websites. But when there are some problems with CDN, it needs an optimization too. And CDN performance tracking is not so simple. Thereareseveralmetrics tomeasuretheContentDeliveryNetworkanditsconditionatthemoment. Here canbenamedthree CDN monitoring metrics:
- server response time performance;
- individualpageelements;
- hostspeed.
Response time from CDN servers is one of the most important indexes of CDN efficiency. That is why its tracking is a necessary part to determine the CDN performance. It also can help to save costs. CDN can be tested with monitoring tools to find out, does the response time shows a market improvement. If answer is positive, than CDN helps to accelerate the speed up content delivery to end user. In turn, this can mean, that investment in this CDN can be effective.
Page load time of HTML is one of the factors that influence on the result of CDN monitoring. Despite the fact that this time is not a true indicator of CDN’s efficiency, many analytics use it to make a report. The specific load times of all elements within the HTML web page differs greatly. That’s why the consolidated time can not be a true measure in the CDN monitoring. There are static and dynamic elements within the HTML file. Element can also be primary hosted and third party hosted. All elements aggregate together to form the web page itself. That is why it is so important to measure the individual elements response time. Some of monitoring CDN tools can not do this, that is why it is important to be careful when choosing a monitoring tool.
Host speed is a very important index for CDN monitoring. In CDN system content is dispersed across the number of servers. That is why,when CDN have some problems, it is difficult to identify the appropriate nodes in the network that can be responsible for them. At the same time, this metric is vital for CDN monitoring. Because if identify the response time from different hosts in CDN, it is possible to find out, which of nodes causing the problem. If a webmaster has this information, he or she can inform the CDN provider. A webmaster also can make some proactive arrangements to provide backups for distributing content to better servers (faster and efficient). As well as regain control of delivery and deployment of CDN content.
There are several monitoring tools available for webmasters. As it always happened, each of them have its own advantages and disadvantages. Every webmaster should choose the concrete CDN monitoring tool, taking into account the characteristics of the CDN that he or she use. To find out what CDN is better for concrete business its important to read about the market. There are over 20 CDN companies now days, that can be named as noticeable players. And there are plenty of new little CDN companies that work with a small online businesses; however, they slowly increase their market share. Some important information about CDN companies and CDN market can be in a best 2015 CDN review.