A Smarter Content Delivery System To Accelerate Complex Content

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© 2010 Cotendo, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Evolution of Legacy CDNs1998 to 2010 were twelve years of explosive, global growth in the use of the Internet. In 1998, the year Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) first appeared, the Internet was a landscape of static objects used by just 147 million people, only 3.6% of the world’s population. In December 2009, the number of users had grown more than ten fold, to over 1.7 billion users–over 25% of the world’s population*.

The Internet of today looks and acts nothing like the Internet of 1998. However, the prevailing approach to managing and accelerating content on the Internet is built on the original 1998 architecture. A patchwork of in-house developed and acquired solutions have been glued onto the original foundation, as traditional CDNs add mountains of servers to try to push more volume and variety of content through fatter “pipes.”

At the same time, the expectations of global end users for the efficient delivery of static and dynamic content has grown as the amount of content and number of online users grows. Over time, throwing more servers and bigger pipes at the problem becomes increasingly expensive, burdening the content provider, while not addressing the fundamental challenges of deliver-ing today’s diverse content efficiently. The old-fashioned “fatter pipes” approach is being overwhelmed by the immense volume of online content and the global demand for access to the content.

A Holistic, Fresh Approach To Internet Content Delivery In 2008, Cotendo took a fresh approach to the problem of online content delivery. Using a holistic view of the Internet, Cotendo’s software engineers and Internet experts leveraged the latest software develop-ment techniques to maximize efficiency at each step in the process of the content delivery value chain. They also focused on the important and unmet need for flexible content acceleration and site acceleration services, as well as the need for sophisticated management of per-formance and cost. The goal was to develop the next-generation content delivery platform, using intelligent server software, which would drive optimized content in the ways outlined in the next section.

Infrastructure:

• Unified and optimized server, rather than the traditional approach of bolting on more servers and infrastructure;

• More economical and efficient use of hardware—one server performing all content delivery tasks, instead of having dedicated servers for each individual service. (The multiple-server model of old-fashioned CDNs results in less efficient performance, as well as complex and inefficient integration.)

*Internet Growth and Statistics—Internet Usage Stats, September 2009: wwwallaboutmarketresearch.com/internet.htm—1/29/10

Central Management:

• Centralized management architecture, rather than distributed approach, enabling better and easier control of content and visibility of all online traffic, while still being fully redundant and fault tolerant;

• Centralized management tools that provide full control to manage the configuration and publish in real time;

• Real-time, online reporting (not just daily or weekly reports).

Whole Site Acceleration:

• Integrated suite of content delivery and website acceleration solutions;

• Accelerated delivery of ALL types of content–small objects, large objects, dynamic (non-cacheable) or static (cacheable) content, and either standard or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) delivery;

• Fast, secure, and reliable whole site acceleration of both static and dynamic content;

• Highly efficient and advanced distributed Domain Name Service (DNS);

From this groundbreaking work emerged the Cotendo Unity Platform, a new class of purpose-built CDN and Site Acceleration services, based on an evaluation of the key issues that content providers face today, around performance, efficiency, and function-ality. The tight integration among the services in the Cotendo Unity Platform yields the maximum performance in content acceleration for co-mingled and co-located delivery and DNS services, streamlining delivery of all types of content to end users around the globe.

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A Smarter Content Delivery System To Accelerate Complex Content

http://www.cotendo.com/services/

http://www.cotendo.com/services/



Cotendo Content Delivery service, combined with Dynamic Site Acceleration and SSL, delivers Whole Site Acceleration–one service served from one hostname–resulting in smooth and easy integration and maximum flexibility.

The Cotendo Unity PlatformThe Cotendo Unity Platform is based on the following services, which also serve as the foundation for its continuing innovation:

• Content Delivery—Increases the speed of delivery of static content of all types, with the flexibility to manage all aspects of caching and delivery;

• Dynamic Site Acceleration (DSA)— Accelerates the performance of dynamic Web pages, such as personalized content, Web applications, and Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions;

• SSL Delivery—Enables robust security, immediate full- range SSL;

• Whole Site Acceleration— Combines Cotendo’s three content acceleration services–Content Delivery, Dynamic Site Acceleration, and SSL Delivery–to ensure easy and seamless integration for all content delivery requirements, served from the same platform;

• CDN Balancer—Balances performance and cost-of-delivery by allocating CDN resources based on geography, time of day, balance by load versus capacity of the origin server, and more;

• Advanced Domain Name Service (ADNS)—Utilizes sophisticated controls to instantly adjust DNS configurations, balance traffic between different resources, and bolster security by protecting from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks;

• Site Assure—Monitors core Web services and other resources, and automates failover response to minimize risk and ensure maximum uptime;

• Real-Time Reporting—Leverages detailed performance metrics 24/7, for making optimal IT and business decisions in real time.

Cotendo’s “Secret Sauce”—Unified Proxy DeliveryThe core of the Cotendo Unity Platform is the Unified Proxy Delivery Server. To efficiently handle all types of content (small and large files, dynamic and static content, and secure or standard HTTP), Cotendo developed highly efficient software that will boost the performance of any standard server, enabling it to out-perform any competing server. This software facilitates efficient handling of many requests, simultaneously, and includes a proprietary file system and I/O management subsystem to enable high I/O throughput with minimal time required to fetch a file from the cache, regardless of its size or type.

Traditional CDNs were designed to accelerate static objects on a website by architecting the site to store the static objects in a different host location, away from the main site, CNAME-ing only that host to the CDN provider. This separation was crucial, as the CDN handled only the static pages, and the non-cacheable objects were served directly from the origin server. However, this approach is inherently inefficient, as it requires modification of the existing site. It is also error prone as links–internal or external–may still direct to the original host.

With Cotendo, all content can be served from the same server, there is no effort required to integrate the CDN to serve the site, and separation between different types of objects is not required.

The Cotendo Unity Platform is built on a real-time content control layer that isn’t bound by typical hardware or software constraints. Cotendo’s flexible software platform was designed from the ground up for real-time content control and advanced functionality, to maximize the key CDN performance areas of delivery speed and system efficiency. The resulting Cotendo CDN easily manages larger volumes of content with less hardware, yielding greater performance efficiencies.

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The Cotendo Unity Platform delivers synergies in accessibility, simplicity, and agility that traditional CDNs cannot produce.

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Cotendo Content Delivery



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Non-Cachable Dynamic ContentWeb Applications

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Dynamic SiteAcceleration

Cotendo Content Delivery and Dynamic Site Acceleration work together to seamlessly deliver both cacheable static content and non-cacheable dynamic content. The Cotendo Web-based management interface provides real-time setup and unified management of ALL Cotendo services.

Cotendo Dynamic Site AccelerationCotendo Dynamic Site Acceleration (DSA) is a highly efficient and robust DSA service focused on improving the delivery of non-cacheable website content.

DSA provides a high degree of protocol and connection optimization that significantly increases delivery performance of dynamic content from the origin location to the regionally closest Cotendo DSA content delivery location. This acceleration is accom-plished through protocol and connec-tion optimization. DSA also decreases the load on the dynamic content server and provides much higher ef-ficiency and leverage of Web applica-tion assets, relative to the number of customers supported. The result is lower Web server load, faster server response times, and accelerated per-formance of the connection between the user and the website.

In addition, Cotendo DSA offers the flexibility of multiple deploy-ment methods with asymmetric or symmetric site acceleration, as well as a mixed-mode model where both methods may be used to reflect different conditions and business rules in different geographic regions. The flexibility of choosing acceleration modes enables online businesses to balance the costs and benefits of each mode for a given location and service.

Cotendo SSL Cotendo SSL provides a wide range of options for configuring an optimal secure delivery channel for all Web-delivered content, whether it is static or dynamic. As the IP address resolution of a server is done on the DNS level, when it is still unknown whether the requested content is HTTP or HTTPS, secure traffic going to the same host cannot be diverted to another IP address. To overcome this challenge, traditional CDNs require modification of the site/application so that the secured content will be served from a dedicated (different) host. With Cotendo SSL, instead of separat-ing content into several servers and hosts, Cotendo’s intelligent software can handle both types of traffic on the same server, automatically determin-ing whether or not the content is SSL protected and handling it appropriately.

Due to the nature of the SSL protocol, such as the key exchange process in the initiation of an SSL session, the combination of SSL with DSA acceler-ates dynamic and secure content and often produces a dramatic reduction in latency, resulting in the serving of objects up to 10 times faster than the origin. This is particularly important in the E-Commerce checkout process.

Cotendo SSL is a secure, high-performance delivery option for both Cotendo Content Delivery and Cotendo Dynamic Site Acceleration. The three, combined, are the foundation of Cotendo Whole Site Acceleration.

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The Cotendo CDN and Site Acceleration Suite delivers improved performance, security, control, agility, and visibility for websites and Web applications for both static and dynamic content.

Cotendo Whole Site Acceleration The Cotendo Whole Site Acceleration

Dynamic Site Acceleration, and Secure SSL to serve all content from a single host. A completely integrated system, Whole Site Acceleration provides easy integration and seamless handling of different types of content, accel-erating all content and applications delivered by an origin server to an end customer. Whole Site Acceleration puts an end to segregation of content by type, since it serves as a proxy for all the content provider’s Web traffic. This combination delivers outstanding performance, control, agility, and visibility.

To enable easy integration without re-architecture of the website, Cotendo provides Cotendo Views. Cotendo Views is an advanced control technology included as a core component of Cotendo’s Unity platform. Cotendo Views allows sophisticated definition, as well as selective refinement, of object behavior and handling. It is enabled by a core software architecture that anticipates a CDN customer’s require-ment for granular content control, unbound from traditional constraints or methods. Cotendo Views enables control via both logical and contex-tual rules for Web object and Web

service behavior, as well as the ability to layer rules for different contexts or real-time conditions.

Cotendo Views makes it easy to integrate a site utilizing DSA, static content (CDN) and SSL, control-ling cache parameters, different SSL deployment methods, and more. All of the configuration is done on the central management interface and requires no modification of the origin servers or of the website’s code.

At the heart of fast delivery of online content is efficient Domain Name

Cotendo’s approach for Advanced DNS management, the required address is retrieved on the first query. Tradi-tional CDNs have evolved through a patch-work of distributed solutions to highly inefficient DNS services, in which reaching the correct content server requires a set of several back-and-forth queries to get the right IP address to the right server. This latency slows the delivery of informa-tion to end users.

Cotendo’s Advanced DNS (ADNS) is a high-performance, globally-distributed DNS service for any website or Web application, regardless of the physical location of the server and the end user.

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Combining Cotendo ADNS with Site Assure reflects service status in real time, automatically directing traffic to the right resource to ensure business and service continuity.

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The combination of Whole Site Acceleration with Cotendo Site Assure and Cotendo ADNS results in optimal service continuity and zero downtime.

DNS is a common target of Distrib-uted Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that can take the entire online service down. Cotendo’s distributed ADNS service is architected to be highly redundant and can withhold and block heavy attacks due to its efficiency and architecture.

In addition, Cotendo’s Advanced DNS can balance traffic between different data centers based on different policies (geo-proximity, weight, time of day, or other). For customers with multiple data centers or origins, combining ADNS with Cotendo Whole Site Delivery enables accelerated delivery of content, allowing Cotendo servers to efficiently fetch content from the origin server closest to them.

Cotendo Site AssureCotendo Site Assure is a fully custom-izable, 24X7, smart monitoring, and automatic failover service. It maintains maximum origin service availability by monitoring core websites and applica-tions from multiple distributed agents, and implements routing policies based

on monitored conditions of the origin server. Site Assure simplifies high availability with easy integration. Site Assure requires no change to the Web architecture. It provides rules to manage out-of-norm events, e.g. the server is down, the site is down, or the load on a specific server is up or down.

Cotendo CDN Balancer Cotendo CDN Balancer enables the allocation of Web traffic based on monetization strategy, business policies, and IT policies. With its flexible, Web-based management console, companies create rules based on weighted allocation of traffic, user’s location, time of day, and domain accessed. Changes to the configura-tion are reflected immediately, in real time, on the network. CDN Balancer can be used not only with Cotendo Unity Platform services, but also with existing resources, including other CDNs, for a multi-vendor strategy, or with the company’s own internal resources.

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Cotendo CDN Balancer works with DSA and the Cotendo Content Delivery service to configure the most efficient and cost-effective content delivery resources for global content delivery needs, and enables the creation of customer-specific, flexible policies and rules to most effectively use a multi-vendor CDN approach.

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[email protected] | 866.749.6462 | INTL +44 20 33188363 |


Cotendo Real-Time ReportingCotendo Real-Time Reporting is a Web-based, real-time reporting system for the Cotendo Unity Platform. Unlike traditional CDNs that might take hours or days to report on content delivery (due to their patchwork of distributed servers and applications), Cotendo’s Unity Platform provides the essential view of all content delivery activity within minutes of the occurrence. Real-Time Reporting provides actionable control over both the CDN’s performance and expense. Reports provide an up-to-date view of data and information about delivery of content to end users.

Real-Time Reporting provides trans-parency and visibility to the delivery process and provides tools to analyze traffic and make decisions in real time. In addition, Cotendo provides real-time, detailed analytics about search engines’ crawlers’ activities on websites and the tools to enhance web performance before Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rankings are compromised.

Getting Started Is Fast And Easy Fast, straightforward implementation —The Cotendo Unity Platform requires no change to the website and no HTML code changes or other modifications. Typical sites are up and running in minutes.

Unrivaled Customer Support—An ExampleReadingGlasses.com implemented Cotendo services–Content Delivery, Dynamic Site Acceleration, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Acceleration, and Advanced Domain Name Service (ADNS)—in September 2009.

Cotendo Real-Time Reporting works with each of the Unity Platform services. The combination of the Cotendo Web-based management interface, Real-Time Reporting and services for monitoring and load balancing, enable full control and visibility of all online traffic at all times.

“It has been a really simple process. Cotendo has taken ownership of it and, at every step, if I have any questions, they have been immediately responsive. In our evaluation of the major CDN vendors, Cotendo impressed us that their support would be unmatched. That’s proven to be the case and it was a huge factor in our choice of Cotendo.” Jason Kyle, eCommerce Director, ReadingGlasses.com

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A Smarter Content Delivery System To Accelerate Complex Content

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