Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

CDN is a content distribution network, which can distribute the content originally located at the origin server to nodes all over the country, making it convenient for users to access the content they need, so as to alleviate Internet network congestion, improve application response rate and improve user experience. With the changes of the Internet industry, CDN has gone through several key stages of technological development.

Following the tide of the Internet, CDN stepped onto the stage of history

When it comes to the birth of CDN, we have to get Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World wide Web. As one of the inventors of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sensitively predicted that network congestion would become an obstacle to the development of the Internet in the near future after formulating the 3w standard, so he proposed a technical challenge to invent a new method to fundamentally realize the congestion-free distribution of Internet content. Tom Leighton, who was next door at that time, realized that the problem of content delivery could be solved by mathematical algorithms, and began to implement his own business plan, setting up the first CDN business company in 1998.

Since then, from 1999 to 2001, the global Internet ushered in a wave of development, websites and Internet services sprung up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, web content accelerated the outbreak of demand, CDN also stepped onto the stage of history. At first, CDN existed in the form of caching static content near end users, such as text, HTML, JSS, pictures, files, etc., to the edge of the network. If new static resources are generated at the origin server, CDN will also cache these resources in time, which can avoid congestion caused by centralized access and optimize cross-region and cross-operator access performance problems, so that users can browse the desired content more quickly. It can also lighten the load on the origin server.

Industry change, from content caching to dynamic acceleration

With the rise of the Internet, on the one hand, the surge of traditional HTTP and download network traffic, the emergence of video and other high-traffic content, bring great challenges to the server and bandwidth, on the other hand, the behavior of Internet users is also gradually rich, website content types are also increasing, streaming media, Flash, transactions, payment, O2O and other services appear on the Internet. Most websites from the original static, transition to the combination of dynamic and static form, such as e-commerce, games and enterprise application sites, there will be a lot of dynamic request acceleration with suffixes such as .aspx, .asp, .jsp, .php and so on. Usually, the cache supports static content well, but when faced with dynamic content requests, it will generally go back to the origin, and then the origin server will transmit the content to the node, and then to the user, and the transmission link steps will increase, which will inevitably affect the transmission quality and efficiency.

Therefore, for dynamic content, CDN also puts forward a new acceleration method, which is to use intelligent routing and transmission protocol optimization algorithms to find the fastest transmission path and automatically avoid congestion and unstable lines, so as to improve the back-to-origin efficiency and ensure the acceleration effect of dynamic and static mixed websites.

In the era of mobile video, CDN welcomes the rapid development

Since then, with the advent of the mobile era, applications such as short video and live streaming have been popularized, and CDN has also ushered in a rare stage of rapid development. This stage sharpens the data monitoring and service capabilities of CDN in streaming media services, such as high throughput, ultra-low latency, low cost, high fluency, high reliability, etc., and focuses on technical indicators from the basic cache hit rate, delay, reduction of origin server bandwidth to premiere time, push stability, stutter rate, and so on.

CDN uses intelligent dispatching system to achieve the balance of water level between nodes, combined with the internal stability optimization strategy of some nodes, so as to alleviate the flow impact of streaming media on CDN nodes.

Looking at the present, CDN has become the infrastructure for the digital transformation of government and enterprises.

With the change of time, at the beginning of 2020, affected by the epidemic, most of the shopping, training, conferences and classes were transferred to the front, resulting in a sharp increase in network traffic. on the one hand, this is undoubtedly a big test for the CDN industry, and it also promotes the development of CDN technology in a healthier and more stable direction.

On the other hand, in the environment of more governments and traditional enterprises accelerating the digital transformation, the importance of CDN as an Internet infrastructure has been further highlighted. Traditional enterprises how to use CDN to build and operate online business operation capabilities, improve customer communication or organizational coordination efficiency, and enhance their own disaster recovery capabilities have become a key step in the smooth realization of digital transformation. And CDN will also usher in the further development of the scene.

For the government and traditional enterprises, because of their business complexity and diversity, they put forward new requirements for content distribution, such as secure transmission of data assets, high availability of origin servers, compliance certification, technical service support and so on. Distribution is as important as edge security.

Peng Fei, an CDN product expert at Aliyun, said: "for example, we usually deploy corresponding DDoS and WAF protection at the origin server. Once the business goes out of the origin server for global distribution through the CDN network, enterprises will naturally hope to continue to resist malicious requests to ensure the security of the distribution link. This is a reasonable request of enterprises to CDN. CDN should not just be used for acceleration, it must be given more mission to help companies shield themselves from all kinds of challenges on the Internet. "

Because of the maturity and evolution of Internet technology, the gradual enrichment of scenes, and the great changes in the way users consume content, CDN is constantly evolving to a more vertical and diversified technology. This requires the intensive cultivation of CDN service providers, constantly give full play to their own advantages, and build enterprise-level comprehensive technical solutions that are deeply subdivided into areas and scenarios.

Aliyun launches government-enterprise security acceleration solution to make it more possible in the future

In order to help government and enterprises better meet the opportunities of domestic digital development, Aliyun has also launched a government-enterprise security acceleration solution.

The solution is to build six security systems: link layer security, network layer security, application layer security, content security, high availability security and security compliance, by injecting international leading cloud security capabilities into the edge of CDN all-station acceleration products (hybrid acceleration), and open up three kinds of service support guarantees, such as automatic operation and maintenance, emergency response and event escort, and give consideration to distribution acceleration and business security in one stop. Help traditional enterprises such as finance, media and digital government to use the Internet to interact with users quickly, reliably, safely and in compliance with regulations, so as to improve the efficiency of user access and resist potential risks.

Summary

CDN is not just the original concept of caching, it has even evolved from content distribution to value delivery. In the whole process of Internet development, the penetration of CDN is increasing, but it is undeniable that there is still a lot of room for development in China's CDN market.

With the advent of the era of 5G and Internet of things, edge computing has gradually become the focus of the industry. CDN natural distributed deployment can be effectively combined with edge computing: through the extensive coverage of underlying infrastructure resources, superimposing the upper layer security, storage, and computing capabilities, the implementation of vertical domain-oriented scenario solutions can help enterprises alleviate the difficulty and burden of operation and maintenance, and improve the efficiency of industry information.

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