Configuration

Referring back to Diagram 1, once requirements and add-ons have been decided, it is now time to look at customisation. Historically, as described earlier in the document, applications and websites are designed and then bolted to a CDN setup. Moving forward, best practice would strongly advise to consider the CDN platform during the design phase of the application or website. Below are groups of configurations that must be considered.

TL;DR

TLS (SSL)

TLS ensures the privacy and data integrity between two communicating points across a network. Originally known as SSL, TLS is not only important when transferring sensitive data (such as personal or payment information) but also for websites/applications in general. Google has also announced that fully HTTPS websites/applications will have SEO priority.

DNS: Domain Name System (Domain Name Server)

DNS is a vast protocol that is essentially its own subject entirely, however, within the scope of this document it is only important to understand the basics of DNS and how it is used when dealing with CDN vendors.

Configuration

Referring back to Diagram 1, once requirements and add-ons have been decided, it is now time to look at customisation.

Many to Many

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.