Many to Many

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Explanation

Many applications that require many CDN configurations. These may or may not (but most likely do) reside across multiple origin servers. Most common in complex setups where a single application cannot serve the purpose of the whole website. As an example, this is commonly seen on trading or very large retail websites where each part of what may look like the same website/application are actually designed, implemented and managed by multiple teams across a business.

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Best Practice

Best practices include all of the models above, however, even more care must be taken to consider the CDN for all aspects at the design phase. Creating complex applications that all work together also requires multiple CDN configurations that need and should be tested alongside the application.

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Basic Definitions:
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Static Content:

Content that does not need to change or validated per user request. An image such as the company logo would be an example of static content. Content that can and should (in most cases be cached).

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Dynamic Content:

Content that does require validation or does change per user request. A user logging into an application would be a dynamic request. Content that should not be cached (in most cases).

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Streaming:

Streaming live video feeds can be achieved via a static content product if only acceleration is required, however, CDN’s that offer media acceleration also offer media servers where streams can be published. If you already have your own media servers, there is no need for a streaming product.

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DDoS:

Distributed Denial of Service. A CDN can protect the origin server against DDoS attack by soaking up the requests in “sponge PoPs”. Please note that a CDN can only protect your origin server if the attack is made to a domain that is currently using a CDN. If the domain is not using the CDN or the attack is directly against the IP address of the origin server, a CDN DDoS product will not protect your website/application. DDoS attacks are volumetric attacks that are generally seen over HTTP, however, it has become more common to see these attacks on a
DNS level. See the following webpage for more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

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WAF:

Website Application Firewall. Again, as with DDoS protection, a CDN WAF product will only protect the origin server via the CDN. WAF differs from DDoS in that in works specifically on layer 7 and monitors HTTP traffic “on the fly”. Many WAF products are customised over time by monitoring and analysing data specific to a single application. The most common types of prevention are SQL injections, Cross Site Scripting and File Inclusion. See the following webpage for more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_application_firewall

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DNS:

Domain Name System (explained later)

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Cloud Storage:

A server (or group of servers) that can be used to store files/objects. Via a CDN access to these servers will be accelerated. It is important to note that in most cases these are storage servers only, not web servers.

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SSL:

Secure Sockets Layer (explained later)

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