4 big names in the CDN. At first glance the same function, but yet very different positions, so here are our recommendations.
Servers
As we explained recently, a CDN is in a way a relay that reduces the distance between the customer and the data. To judge a CDN offer, the first idea is to look at the number and location of servers around the world. Below is a small personalized Google Maps:
Akamai is not represented because it offers more than 200,000 servers. In other words, it crushes the competition on this point.
Cloudflare est numéro 2, avec notamment une forte présence derrière le Great Firewall, i.e en Chine. Fastly, StackPath et Cloudfront ont assez peu de serveurs, mais ne préjugeons pas de la qualité de chacun. N’oublions pas que Cloudfront fait partie D’Amazon Web Services, un titan de l’hosting.
Pricing and features
With the notable exception of Cloudflare (often referred to as reverse proxy, sic), which offers $20 and $200 plans (as well as an "enterprise" offer), CDNs offer bandwidth-based pricing:
| StackPath | CloudFlare | Amazon CloudFront | Akamai Edge | Fastly |
| 250 GB | $21 | $0, $20, $200 * | $24 | $30 |
| 500 GB | $39 | $48 | $60 | |
| 1 TB | $79 | $96 | $120 | |
| 5 TB | $299 | $480 | $600 | |
| 10 TB | $499 | $888 | ~$3,500 ** | $1,200 |
In terms of functionality, those 5 offer basic elements:
- Origin Pull
- Push
- Cache Purge
- Gzip
- Custom CNAMEs
- API
- SSL
Everyone then make their own way:
- StackPath est en pointe sur lé sécurité
- Fastly positions itself as a media specialist
- Amazon brings forwards AWS Integration
- Akamai, the market leader, highlights its acceleration and adaptation capabilities to the device and its connection
Performance
Evaluating the performance of a network, machine, processor or car will always be the same question: how do we count?
In our case there is a fairly standard element that could be similar to the automobile displacement: The "initcwnd" parameter, i.e. the number of packets sent to the new connection after the first GET request. Seen as this:
- StackPath: 32 packets
- CloudFlare: 10 packets
- Amazon CloudFront: 10 packets
- Akamai Edge: 16 packets
- Fastly: 10 packets
That being said, different typologies of site adapt to different CDN.
This will be the focus in a future article!
