Private CDN | Explained
Private CDN | Explained
Digital content providers face the daunting task of maintaining a high-quality delivery experience amidst a growing customer base. Consumers expect multimedia content, such as video, social media feed, and high-definition games to be delivered without apparent latency. With little room for error, industry stakeholders shift their attention to Private CDN to balance cost, availability, latency, and security.
In this article, we’ll explore what a Private CDN is and how it allows companies to expand service delivery coverage efficiently, securely, and reliably while keeping infrastructure costs manageable.
What is a Private CDN, and How Does it Work?
A Private CDN is a content delivery network (CDN) that exclusively serves an organization. A content delivery network, or CDN, consists of a group of interconnected servers installed at various locations. These servers share a similar purpose – reducing the latency or load time when users access content originally hosted on the main server.
Let’s consider a simple example of a video streaming provider with an origin server based in the US and a subscriber in Singapore. Without a CDN, the subscriber must connect to the US server, located halfway around the planet, to stream movies or TV shows. While most major cities are equipped with high-speed internet connectivity, data bandwidth might degrade due to the substantial distance between the device and the server.
A CDN introduces an intermediary layer of servers with computing and caching capabilities. These servers, often termed CDN Servers, are scattered over regions with a substantial distance from the origin server. CDN Servers act like a middle-person by storing frequently-downloaded content from the origin server and distributing them to the nearest users.
By leveraging CDN, businesses can ensure that their customers enjoy undisrupted access to content like video, images, or file downloads, regardless of where they are. CDN spares the origin server from the burden of managing large numbers of incoming requests, particularly at peak periods.
Private CDN vs Cloud CDN
While the concept of CDN is well-defined, there are differences in how the servers are managed and utilized. A Private CDN is used solely by a single organization and is never shared with other business users.
Meanwhile, Cloud CDN is a third-party managed distributed content delivery solution that enables businesses to place content to the users. Businesses usually subscribe to a Cloud CDN on a pay-per-use basis. Various organizations may share the same Cloud CDN servers, which makes it an economically attractive option for small to medium companies and web developers.
What are the Advantages of Private CDN?
Content providers, particularly OTT services, have favored Private CDN when expanding their multimedia delivery strategies. They use Private CDN individually or as part of a more comprehensive multi-CDN approach. Either way, using a Private CDN can benefit your organization in these areas.
Quality of Experience
Private CDN is synonymous with exclusivity, so you don’t have to compete with other organizations over the shared cache space. The entire infrastructure is designed according to your needs and it is dedicated to propagating your content to active users. Naturally, this results in a higher hit/request ratio because there is no competition for traffic. The hit ratio indicates the CDN’s performance when fulfilling incoming requests for its cache.
Of course, a high hit ratio isn’t the only influencing factor for a better end-user experience. There are industry-specific metrics that are used to measure the quality of experience. For OTT sector, for example, Private CDN helps to reduce Startup error, Buffer ratio, Join time and In-stream error metrics. For E-commerce, on the other hand, Private CDN improves Response time, Page speed scores and SEO rankings.
Cost Saving
Cloud CDN’s pay-per-use model might seem reasonable for organizations as they are charged based on the network traffic. However, the cost of Cloud CDNs starts to bite when subscribers grow beyond a certain threshold. Eventually, the monthly fees become significant costs that could affect the bottom line. Medianova deviates from conventional practices by offering flat-free pricing for our Private CDN solution. This allows organizations to pay for the allocated bandwidth instead of traffic and estimate the cost of distributing their content at a per GB rate.
This payment model provides companies more flexibility when planning their budget. Also, the cost of hosting content on a Private CDN decreases as the required capacity grows. Therefore, streaming providers with a thriving customer base should consider Private CDN as a cost-saving alternative.
Greater Control of Infrastructure
As organizations grow, they need scalable CDN solutions that allow them to innovate flexibility beyond vendor or technological constraints. Migrating to Private CDN infrastructure allows companies to be agile and responsive to evolving technologies. By being the sole user of the CDN servers, organizations are not bound by service agreements or the activities of shared business users.
For example, organizations can enforce data privacy policies or set up perimeter security to harden the CDN servers at their own discretion. Or they can expand the Point of Presence (POPs) in specific locations when the customer base grows.
Multi-CDN Support
Organizations can use Private CDNs as a part of a broader multi-CDN approach. Multi-CDN is a combination of several Private CDNs or a mixture of Private and Cloud CDN.
Multi-CDN provides businesses with more options regarding pricing, availability, security, and vendor selections. For example, you can use a Private CDN to provide an additional point of presence in geographical locations not covered by your existing CDN infrastructure.
Running multiple CDNs, particularly with the inclusion of private servers, also reduces cyber risks. For example, an attack on a single CDN does not affect other operational Private CDNs.
Managed Service
The idea of setting up a Private CDN could invoke visions of costly server setups in different regions. Understandably, some content streaming providers might operate with a tight budget, and hiring a dedicated IT team to provide the necessary infrastructure is not financially viable.
Medianova frees you from such burden when you opt for a depodicated CDN solution. Our team provides the necessary services to install and maintain the Private CDN servers at our data centers worldwide. Instead of being consumed by the technicalities of CDN, you can focus your resources on producing engaging content for customers.
Which Types of Businesses Need a Private CDN?
Private CDNs offer a combination of speed, security, availability, and affordability. It benefits various types of companies including, but not limited to, video streaming, e-commerce, online education, gaming, social media networks, SaaS, and media publishers.
A Private CDN’s exclusive control and privacy are critical for companies in financial, medical, and other industries that handle sensitive data. They help such companies comply with data protection laws and uphold customers’ trust in their services.
Conclusion
Private CDN takes web acceleration to the next level by allowing organizations granular control of the content delivery infrastructure. Whether on its own or as a part of a multi-CDN approach, you will be assured of high-performance, affordable, and scalable content distribution funnels with a Private CDN.
Medianova’s Private CDN is engineered with cutting-edge technologies that enhance performance, security, and availability.
Talk to us about your Private CDN needs now.
