🌍 CDN

Global Acceleration, Edge Security & Origin Offload

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) accelerates web sites, APIs, apps, and streaming by serving content from edge Points of Presence (PoPs) close to users—while shielding your origin with WAF (Web Application Firewall), DDoS protection (Distributed Denial of Service), TLS termination, bot defense, and edge compute.
SolveForce designs, implements, and operates CDN services so you get lower latency, lower origin load, higher reliability, and better security—with auditable results.

Where CDN fits in the SolveForce model:
🌐 Connectivity (Grammar) → Connectivity • 🖧 Networks & DCs → Networks & Data Centers
☁️ Cloud (Syntax) → Cloud • 🔒 Security (Semantics) → Cybersecurity
🔗 Interconnect → Direct Connect • 🧭 Routing → BGP Management

🎯 What You Get with SolveForce CDN

  • Speed: Lower TTFB (Time To First Byte) and faster page loads via global Anycast and HTTP/2/HTTP/3 (QUIC).
  • Offload: Increase Cache Hit Ratio (CHR) and reduce origin egress/compute; often 40–95% origin offload.
  • Resilience: Built-in DDoS scrubbing, automatic retries, tiered cache/origin shield; higher availability.
  • Security: WAF, bot management, mTLS to origin, geofencing, signed URLs/cookies. → WAF / Bot Management • DDoS Protection
  • Edge Compute: Functions/workers at the edge for redirects, A/B testing, header/payload transforms, and auth.
  • Evidence: SLO dashboards for latency, availability, offload %, and error rate—plus monthly/quarterly reports.

🧭 How CDN Works (Plain-English)

  1. User connects to the nearest PoP using Anycast DNS/BGP.
  2. Edge serves cached content (images, JS/CSS, binaries, manifests) instantly; if missing, it fetches from origin.
  3. Edge security evaluates requests (WAF, bot rules, rate limits), enforces TLS policy, and sets cache keys/headers.
  4. Tiered caching/origin shield prevents dog-piling on origin during spikes; one fetch populates many PoPs.
  5. Observability streams logs/metrics from PoPs to analytics and SIEM/SOAR. → SIEM / SOAR

📦 Core Use Cases

  • Web & API Acceleration — Lower latency for HTML, JSON, GraphQL, REST; route-sensitive API caching with precise keys/headers.
  • Media Delivery — HLS/DASH streaming, live events, VOD packaging, time-shift, just-in-time (JIT) transcode at the edge.
  • Software & Game Distribution — Large file delivery (patches, ISOs, installers) with integrity and regional throttles.
  • Security Front Door — WAF, bot defense, geo/IP allow/deny, device fingerprint, Rate Limiting.
  • Edge Compute — Redirect logic, personalization, localization, cookie/jwt validation, synthetic responses at edge.
  • Zero Trust Origins — Hide origin behind the CDN; allowlist only PoP IPs; require mTLS from edge to origin. → Encryption

🧱 Architecture Patterns

A) Classic Static + API

  • Static assets (images, JS, CSS, fonts) with long Cache-Control; immutable versioning.
  • API traffic cached by method/path/query/cookie where safe; strict cache keys and Vary rules.

B) Streaming (Live/VOD)

  • Manifest (HLS/DASH) short TTL; segment objects longer TTL with stale-while-revalidate.
  • Origin Shield to reduce fan-out; multi-CDN or multi-PoP failover for events.

C) Software/Gaming

  • Checksum/signed URLs; regional throughput caps; request collapsing to avoid origin thundering herds.

D) Zero-Trust Origin

  • Origin cloaking (no direct Internet exposure), mTLS to origin, IP allowlists; WAF + bot at edge.

🧰 Acceleration Features (That Actually Matter)

  • HTTP/2, HTTP/3 (QUIC) enable multiplexing and loss-friendly recovery.
  • Brotli/Gzip compression for text assets; image optimization (WebP/AVIF) at the edge.
  • Tiered cache / Origin Shield reduces duplicate origin fetches.
  • Prefetch/Preload hints; Early Hints (103) to warm browsers.
  • Surrogate keys for instant group invalidation (e.g., “product:1234”).
  • Stale-if-error / Stale-while-revalidate to mask origin hiccups.

🔒 Edge Security (Spelled Out)

  • WAF (Web Application Firewall) — OWASP Top 10, virtual patching, custom rules, positive security models. → WAF / Bot Management
  • Bot Management — Behavioral & fingerprinting defenses against scraping, credential stuffing, fake checkouts.
  • DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) — Always-on global scrubbing with L3–L7 protections. → DDoS Protection
  • TLS everywhere — TLS_1.2+ to users; mutual TLS (mTLS) from edge to origin; HSTS, OCSP stapling, and TLS session resumption.
  • Signed URLs/Cookies — Token/jwt-based access; URL expiry; IP/geo constraints; DRM integrations for premium media.
  • Geo/ASN controls — Restrict per region, industry, or ISP as needed.
  • Rate Limiting — Per-IP/app/client-ID thresholds; burst protection.

📊 Observability & SLOs

  • Edge analytics — cache hit ratio, offload %, TTFB, time-to-render, error rate, bandwidth, concurrent viewers.
  • RUM (Real User Monitoring) — real browser telemetry by geography and device.
  • Synthetics — scripted journeys from global probes.
  • SLO guardrails (recommendations):
  • TTFB (HTML): ≤ 200–400 ms by region
  • Availability: ≥ 99.95% global edge
  • CHR (Cache Hit Ratio): web static ≥ 85%, media ≥ 90%+
  • Origin offload: ≥ 50–95% depending on asset mix

Logs and metrics stream to your lake/observability stack and SIEM/SOAR for security analytics. → SIEM / SOAR

🧮 Cost Drivers (What Affects Your Bill)

  • Egress/egress geography — delivery region mix (NA, EMEA, APAC, LATAM).
  • Requests — HTTP/HTTPS request counts (L7).
  • Functions at Edge — per-invocation compute and CPU time.
  • Invalidations — API calls for purge; prefer surrogate-key purges for efficiency.
  • Reserved commits — traffic commits lower unit cost; multi-year terms reduce TCO.

We’ll model TCO vs. DIY (cloud egress + compute + WAF + DDoS) to pick the right blend and negotiate the best price/performance.

🧭 Implementation Checklist (No Surprises)

  1. Origins & health — Primary/backup origins, health endpoints, and failover rules.
  2. DNS & certificates — CNAMEs, ACME automation, wildcard/TLS SANs; HSTS policy.
  3. Cache policy — TTLs, keys (path/query/cookie/header), vary rules, cookie normalization.
  4. Shield & tiering — Select a regional origin shield and enable tiered cache.
  5. Security policy — WAF rules, bot models, geo/ASN lists, signed URL/Token strategy.
  6. Edge compute — Workers/functions (A/B tests, rewrites, auth, headers).
  7. Logs & metrics — Export to SIEM/observability; SLO dashboards for TTFB/CHR/offload/availability.
  8. Change control — staged rollouts, canary PoPs, automatic rollback on error.
  9. Contracts & SLAs — availability, DDoS, WAF rule deployment times, support tiers.

🏭 Industry Patterns (What “Great” Looks Like)

  • Retail / eCommerce — image/CDN optimization, bot defense at checkout, signed URLs for dynamic media, A/B at edge.
  • Media & Entertainment — multi-CDN, manifest conditioning, tiered cache, DRM, live-ops dashboards.
  • Finance — API acceleration, signed requests, WAF positive models, geofencing, mTLS backhaul.
  • Healthcare — HIPAA-aligned edge security, tokenized media links, mTLS to origin, immutable logs.
  • SaaS / API — per-tenant keys/headers, request collapsing, edge rate limiting, JSON compression.

See verticals → Knowledge Hub

🔗 Peering, On-Ramps & Origin Strategy

  • On-ramps — Private cloud paths via AWS Direct Connect / Azure ExpressRoute / Google Interconnect. → Direct Connect
  • Colocation — Put origins near carrier-dense PoPs to shave ms and gain carrier choice. → Colocation
  • Optical backbones — Deterministic DCI with 10/100/400G waves; meta stable latency at Layer-1. → Wavelength Services
  • Routing policy — Anycast announcements; edge withdraw on health; BGP communities for traffic engineering. → BGP Management

🧩 Security & Compliance (Shared Responsibility)

  • Edge — WAF/bot/DDoS/TLS; tokenized access; geo/ASN controls; signed URLs.
  • Origin — mTLS from CDN, allowlist PoP IPs; microsegment and harden; store secrets in a vault. → Microsegmentation • Key Management / HSM
  • Evidence — forward logs to SIEM/SOAR; store CDN configs as code; track purges and rule changes in ITSM.
  • Compliance mapping — PCI DSS (card pages), ISO 27001 controls, SOC 2 evidence, HIPAA considerations for PHI media.

🔄 Where CDN Fits (Recursive View)

1) Grammar — Edge PoPs ride Connectivity and interconnects.
2) Syntax — CDN organizes delivery in Cloud patterns (static, API, media).
3) Semantics — Edge security preserves truth → Cybersecurity.
4) Pragmatics — Edge compute and SolveForce AI steer experiences, A/B logic, and caching strategy.
5) Foundation — Shared terms and policies are enforced by Primacy of Language.
6) Map — Full index in the SolveForce Codex.

📞 Get a CDN Design & Rollout Plan

Related pages:
Networks & Data Centers • Direct Connect • WAF / Bot Management • DDoS Protection • SIEM / SOAR • Colocation • Wavelength Services • NOC Services • Knowledge Hub