Global edge cloud platform provider Fastly, Inc. has announced Origin Connect, a direct private network connection between an organisation’s origin server and a Fastly Shield point of presence (POP). Designed for companies moving more than one gigabit of data per second, such as media, video, and streaming companies, Fastly says Origin Connect is an effective way to lower transit costs, reduce engineering complexity, and improve reliability for high-volume streaming content.
Using Origin Connect is “akin to plugging directly into an outlet instead of connecting to an extension cord first”. Companies will benefit from the direct connection necessary to reduce transit costs as well as the risks of content lag associated with any additional path content travels to get from initial client request to an origin server, and all the way back to the end user. The benefits of using Origin Connect include:
- Reliability: A direct, private peering connection increases the predictability of traffic sent across dedicated bandwidth and reduces the number of hops in a network path. As a result, there are fewer providers involved in getting traffic from the organization’s servers to Fastly’s network and back again.
- Reduced transit costs: Customers using Origin Connect will no longer pay egress costs for outbound traffic from their origin server since they are shipping that traffic over a private connection directly to Fastly.
- Availability: Origin Connect improves the availability of content and streaming services by reducing the risks of failed origin requests, whether from network congestion or from shared public infrastructure between upstream providers.
- Performance: Reduced latency and more consistent and predictable performance due to the lack of in-between transit and upstream providers and a dedicated fiber interconnect.
Fastly has also announced Cloud Optimizer, a new offering that enables critical, high-traffic content delivery by sitting between a company’s content delivery network (CDN) and its central cloud. Cloud Optimizer brings customers with multi-cloud or multi-CDN architectures, especially within commerce and high tech verticals, the real-time control and visibility required to make informed business decisions as quickly as possible, without the need to re-architect network infrastructure.
Fastly’s Cloud Optimizer is designed to help organisations improve load balancing and intelligent routing, which means end users can enjoy a more reliable digital experience. Other benefits include:
Superior Performance: Fastly’s powerful points-of-presence (POPs) are built with solid-state drives (SSDs) and large amounts of memory in well-connected locations around the world to deliver higher cache hit ratio, significantly reducing the need for requests to go back to origin. Customers will enjoy greater security as well, as all traffic is encrypted by TLS.
Real-time Control and Visibility: Gain full control with the ability to push out configurations quickly and pivot immediately as needed. Real-time logs combined with client-side analytics allow for rapid insight and true observability down to the network layer.
Agility: With intelligent routing capabilities, organizations can switch between origins quickly to avoid getting locked into one provider. Cloud Optimizer can even support integrated configuration with CI/CD systems, and during migrations from on-premise to cloud, or from one cloud provider to another.
Cost Reduction: Request Collapsing consolidates multiple requests for the same piece of content down to one request back to origin. This, compounded with Fastly’s unique POP design that can increase cache hit ratio, protects a business’s origin from a barrage of identical requests and reduces the computing resources needed to support a site.
Cloud Optimizer also adds real-time logging for greater visibility and lowers costs by consolidating trips to origin, no matter where network infrastructure is located. In addition, all Fastly functionality, such as API acceleration and instant configuration changes, comes included in the platform, so there is no need to manage separate networks or pay hidden fees.
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