Fastest CDN - Checklist to Find the Best CDN Solution

Many people are always looking for the fastest CDN (content delivery network). After all, that is a big part of what a good content delivery solution is all about. However, the fastest CDN might not always be the best solution for your business or website. There are a lot of different factors you should consider when shopping for a content delivery solution, speed is definitely one of them, but you also should be looking at a CDN provider's latency, support, pricing, features, and even security. Check out our checklist below, which can help you make a more informed decision when choosing your next content delivery solution.

Speed

Speed is a very big factor when choosing a content delivery solution, and it is usually the first thing people want to test. Most CDN providers have free trials, which makes it easy for you to signup and test the actual speeds on your website. We have a great list of 15 website speed test tools that you can use to better measure the performance of your website.

Also, remember, when it comes to your website, most of the assets you probably need to speed up are your images. Just how much exactly? Well, according to the HTTP Archive, 43% of the average bytes per page are made up of images. That means, for most people, what you are really looking for is an image CDN. We interviewed over 20 web performance experts a while back, and 46% of the experts said that the number one priority or focus should be on image optimization. We did a case study a while back to find out how much faster the download times on our image assets were when we ran a CDN (KeyCDN) and without one.

On average, the total download times on our image assets (without a CDN) and KeyCDN POPs (with a CDN) decreased by 75.58%!

KeyCDN has a Performance Test tool that you can use to measure the speed of individual assets on your websites. It allows you to test them simultaneously from 10 different locations. It gives a breakdown of the HTTP status code, KeyCDN cache status, ETag, DNS, Connect, TLS, and TTFB in one table.

This tool can actually be very useful for troubleshooting, and we have even found ourselves using it quite a bit. Besides testing your own locally hosted or CDN assets, if you are running third party scripts, this can also be a great way to ensure they are loading fast around the globe. While speed is crucial in your search for the fastest CDN, don't also forget some of these other factors below.

Latency

The next factor you should consider when choosing a CDN solution or trying to figure out who has the fastest CDN is latency. We touched on this a little bit above already, but we want to dive into it further. What is latency? Basically, it is the round trip time from the browser to the server. There are four main causes that can affect network latency times:

1. Transmission mediums
2. Propagation times
3. Router hop delays
4. Storage delays

Using a CDN helps bring resources closer to the user by caching them in multiple locations around the world. Once those resources are cached, a user's request only needs to travel to the closest POP (edge server) to retrieve that data instead of going back to the origin server each time.

50% of your 1-second page load time budget on mobile is taken up by network latency overhead.

- WPT

Similar to our image CDN test above, we also ran a latency test with and without a CDN. The results are below. We used KeyCDN's Ping Test tool to get the results.

The latency between our origin server (without a CDN) and our POPs (with a CDN) on average is decreased by 88%! So as you can see, if you want to decrease latency, deploying a content delivery network can definitely help you do that.

So as you are looking for a CDN solution, make sure to compare latency as it is very important for faster delivery of your assets.

Number of POPs (edge servers)

If you are looking for the fastest CDN, you need to ensure the CDN provider has a decent amount of POPs (edge servers). A CDN with only 5 POPs will probably not cut it, especially if you have traffic and/or customers from all over the globe. We recommend choosing a provider with at least 20 locations, as this usually means they have strategically enough placed POPs that users will always get cached content from a close location. Again, this places a huge role in reducing latency by decreasing the physical distance.

KeyCDN has a growing network of POPs, and we are dedicated to global expansion. In November 2022, we expanded Latin America with new POPs in Colombia and Argentina. Latin America was expanded to include Peru in January 2023, and in Europe, we have already opened three more POPs this year in Portugal, Ireland, and Denmark. We are always looking for new locations, and you can see the POPs we have on our roadmap on our network page.

Keep in mind where your customers and visitors are already coming from. You can easily pull this up within Google Analytics under geo-location. Are they in certain regions or all around the globe? Then take that data and look for a CDN provider with POPs in those areas.

You can then narrow it down even further by city. Then look at your goals/conversions to see where a majority of your business is coming from.

There is also a great comparison of CDNs on cdncomparison.com in which you can quickly see providers and how many POPs they have.

Reliability

Reliability is another very important feature when it comes to choosing a CDN solution, as you don't want your assets to suddenly stop serving. Most CDN providers are set up in a way that if one edge server (POP) goes down, then it simply routes the request to the next nearest edge server. KeyCDN has a dedicated network status page which you can check.

Another way to ensure reliability is to use a multi CDN solution, which is the process of spreading a website's static content across the servers of multiple CDN providers to further increase global presence. While there are additional benefits to a multi CDN setup, there are also some disadvantages to be aware of, such as:

• Added complexity
• Added administrative duties (if using the load-balancing method)
• Additional costs required (load balancer service / CDN aggregation service / higher costs of CDN providers)
• The total cost of ownership and maintenance of a multi CDN is quite high

A website should be receiving a substantial amount of traffic from various locations spread across the globe before beginning to investigate the possibility of implementing a multi CDN.

Also, did you know that you can actually use Cloudflare in conjunction with KeyCDN? Because Cloudflare is based on a freemium model, you usually don't get all the advantages unless you are willing to pay a higher price. Using Cloudflare and KeyCDN allows you to gain benefits of the following features:

• Origin Shield
• Secure Token
• Let's Encrypt support
• Push Zones
• Wildcard subdomains
• Detailed analytics

Security

Another factor that is of great importance when trying to find the best CDN solution is security! With the increasing prevalence of cyber threats and attacks, it's crucial to ensure that your website's content and data are secure and protected.

The first thing to consider when choosing a CDN provider is the security features and protocols they offer. "HTTPS Everywhere" is happening and so you want to make sure that you have the best available SSL/TLS options provided for your sites. This ensures no data is ever sent in plain text and that everything is encrypted. Remember, even simple things like WordPress login pages should really be secured. KeyCDN offers the three following SSL options:

1. Shared SSL (free)
2. Custom SSL with your own certificate (requires you purchase certificate)
3. Custom SSL with Let's Encrypt (free)

If all you need is a domain-validated certificate, then we highly recommend using a CDN provider that has partnered with Let's Encrypt. KeyCDN even sponsors Let's Encrypt because we believe the SSL certs should be free and that every website should be running over HTTPS. Here is a list of CDN providers who support Let's Encrypt and have an integration.

Besides SSL/TLS, there is also the matter of securing your CDN account. According to a survey conducted by TeleSign, 40% of users said they had a security incident in the last year, meaning they had an account hacked, password stolen, or were given a notice that their personal information had been compromised. That is why KeyCDN added two-factor authentication, which helps improve account security by requiring the user to provide two forms of authentication in order to log in. You can also secure your account by restricting to IP addresses.

One last additional security feature when it comes to CDN providers that can be very useful is Secure Tokens. While most CDN providers charge for this, KeyCDN provides this for free to all users. Secure Token allows you to generate secured links with an expiration time. OOnce a token has expired, it is not possible anymore to access the content, unlike some other providers.

As you can see, there are many different security features that you should be aware of when looking for a CDN provider. Make sure they have them!

Price

Price is always a factor, no matter what you are purchasing. Most CDN providers charge by the GB. So it is helpful if you know how much bandwidth you are currently using on your site so that you can calculate how much using a CDN will cost you. Most web hosts will have easy reports you can export to see data transfer. For example, on the site below, they have used 12.01 GB of data with their web host in the last 30 days.

And in the last 30 days they have used 34.84 GB of data with KeyCDN.

That means the content delivery network is handling 74% of the load. So when it comes to pricing out a CDN it is important to understand how much traffic your CDN delivers vs your web host. As you can see the CDN does most of the heavy lifting. You can see pricing comparison table on cdncomparison.com to get an idea of what CDN providers are charging. KeyCDN offers transparent pricing and we are completely pay as you go. Unlike other low-cost CDNs, we don't sell you a package that doesn't fit afterward.

Advanced features

Make sure when you are looking at CDN providers that they have advanced features that will help cut costs and make content delivery even faster. Some advanced CDN features we are referring to are things like:

• X-Pull Key
• Zone Referrer (hotlink protection)
• Origin Shield
• Instant purge
• Cache-Control
• Logging
• Detailed analytics
• RESTful API

One of the unique features that KeyCDN offers is Origin Shield. Other providers charge hundreds of dollars for this feature, while we provide this completely free to all users. Origin Shield is basically an extra caching layer that reduces the load on your origin server and accelerates the distribution of your content from the origin server to your edge servers. Origin Shield is a great feature to reduce the traffic on your origin server to an absolute minimum and protect your infrastructure from abuse or traffic spikes.

So make sure not to settle on the first CDN provider you find. There are good CDN solutions out there with some of the advanced features like those mentioned above.

Platform integrations

What good is a CDN if you can't integrate it into your existing platform? Also, make sure to plan ahead for the future. Perhaps you are running a Drupal site and plan on migrating to WordPress. Make sure the CDN provider supports all the popular CMS platforms ahead of time. Did you know that KeyCDN supports over 30 different platforms? And we have integrations guides for all of them. Here is a list of integrations currently supported:

If you are running on WordPress we even have a free CDN Enabler plugin which allows you to enable your CDN with only a few clicks. We want to help support the WP community and now integrating with a CDN has never been so easy! You can also use this plugin with any CDN provider, not just KeyCDN. So before simply choosing a fast CDN, make sure they have a wide variety of platform integrations.

Support

Whenever you use a service in the technology industry, good support is almost always a big requirement. No matter what CDN provider you choose, you will most likely run into issues or have questions at one point or another. Support options from current CDN providers varies quite a bit. Some have phone support, some have live chat, and others have ticket support. In fact, some of them offer all of those combined. If you need more hand-holding or help, perhaps a CDN solution with live chat is a better way to go. Sometimes it depends on how much you really think you will need support.

KeyCDN has chosen to go the route of ticket support and offering the best documentation possible. Between our knowledge base and our blog, we have over 200 tutorials and walkthroughs on how to use a CDN, setup a CDN, and how to troubleshoot errors. We spend many hours writing these so that you can immediately find the answers you are seeking no matter what time of day it is.

You can always open up a support ticket or send us a tweet @keycdn.

Commitment to ongoing development

When you are on the hunt for that fastest CDN provider, make sure you pick one that is committed to ongoing development. What do we mean by that? There are certain CDN providers out there that are much faster to launch new features and support new protocols when they become stable and available to the public. If you pick what we call "stagnant CDN" you could be waiting years for those shiny new features everyone else is getting.

KeyCDN is committed to ongoing development and was one of the first providers to launch HTTP/2 support as well as a Let's Encrypt integration. And we are working on Brotli support! HTTP/2 support allows us to offer faster speeds than most providers for those running over HTTPS because of the performance benefits of the new protocol.

HTTP/2 is a protocol designed for low-latency transport of content over the World Wide Web.

Some key features of HTTP/2 include:

• Binary: As opposed to HTTP/1.1, which is textual.
• Multiplexing: Allowing multiple requests and responses to be sent at the same time.
• Header compression: Headers are compressed using a new algorithm which in turn reduces the amount of data.
• One Connection: Allows a client to use just one connection per origin.
• Server Push: Avoid delays by pushing responses it thinks the client will need to cache.

If you want to stay ahead of the competition, join a CDN who is committed and excited about development for faster content delivery.

There is more than simply finding the fastest CDN

So hopefully, you can see that while you might have thought you were just searching for the fastest CDN, there are a lot of other factors to consider; such as latency, the number of POPs (locations), reliability, security, price, advanced features, platform integrations, support, and an ongoing commitment to development. Happy content delivery!