Easily compare BelugaCDN and Lumen for POP locations, products, pricing, features & support. We hope this helps you better understand the similarities and differences between these content delivery networks.
Company
| Company | BelugaCDN | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| Short profile | BelugaCDN launched their services in 2015 and is a pay-as-you-go, low-cost CDN provider. They have a full-featured IPv4+IPv6 network and POPs on 5 continents. | Lumen (formerly known as Centurylink or Level 3) owns and operates a global Tier-1 network and - logically - their CDN runs on top of it. Lumen CDN has POPs on many continents and their product focus is on video, large object delivery and edge computing. |
Products
| Product | BelugaCDN | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ... | CDN Edge Compute | |
| Small file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of small files (file size <1 MB) | CDN and/or CDN Edge Compute | |
| Large file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of large files (file size >1 MB) | ||
| Live videoDelivery of live video. RTMP? Transcoding/transmuxing? | Only delivery of the HTTP video streams, no transcoding or transmuxing | CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery |
| Video on demandDelivery of on demand video | Pseudo-streaming (progressive streaming), byte range requests support | CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery |
| Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization | part of CDN Edge Compute | |
| DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain | ||
| WAFWeb Application Firewall | WAF | |
| Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. | Lumen DDoS Hyper (on-demand) and DDoS Mitigation Service | |
| Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs | Available upon request. Extra costs apply | CDN Mesh Delivery for Enterprise |
| Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers | Edge Compute |
Network
How many POP locations do BelugaCDN and Lumen have in different parts of the world?
| Region | BelugaCDN | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| North America | 13 | 28 |
| Latin America | 1 | 11 |
| Europe | 4 | 35 |
| Russia & CIS | 0 | 0 |
| Asia excl. China | 5 | 7 |
| China | 0 | 0 |
| Oceania | 1 | 5 |
| Middle East | 0 | 4 |
| Africa | 0 | 3 |
Pricing
| Pricing & contract duration | BelugaCDN | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum contract term | None | Unknown |
| Minimum monthly costs | $5 | Unknown |
| Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests | 5000 requests per GB included. Overages $0.0035 per 10k requests | Unknown |
| Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred | None | Unknown |
| NA/EU traffic (low volume) | $0.01 per GB | Unknown |
| APAC traffic (low volume) | Unknown | Unknown |
| LATAM traffic (low volume) | Unknown | Unknown |
Features
| Web acceleration | BelugaCDN | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. | Not yet, but coming soon. | |
| Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? | Often instant, sometimes a few minutes | No longer than 15 minutes - Often instant |
Apex/root domain OK  No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com |
Global Anycasted IP available, but Beluga recommends against it | Available with Section product for an additional fee |
| HTTP/2 | ||
| HTTP/3 | ||
| WebSockets | ||
| IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? | ||
| Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery |
Compress on the fly | Resend from origin, or compress on edge |
| Origin pull - protocolHTTP only or HTTPS possible too? | HTTP and HTTPS. | HTTP and HTTPS. |
| Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value? |
Configure specific other Host header
CDN can also forward client request Host header to origin
|
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| Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP | Available upon request | |
| Waiting RoomDuring peak traffic, route users to a virtual waiting room | ||
| Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin | Available upon request | FTP, SFTP, rsync. Storage costs apply |
| Cache control - CDN caching | Honor origin sent headers or configure overrides | |
| Cache control - client caching | ||
| Serve Stale CDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble |
||
| Purge Invalidate or delete cached objects on CDN |
Instant | Instant |
| Purge - capabilities | Purge all and purge using regex | Purge all but not purge by directory or tag or header |
| Analytics | All metrics are aggregated every 10 seconds, exported in real-time | |
| Log files |
Real-time export to Elastic Search or Redis. FTP.
10 million requests/month free, $0.50/million events exported overage
|
|
| API | Purge, analytics, configuration | Purge, analytics, configuration |
| HTTPS & Content Protection | BelugaCDN | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net | ||
| Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate | ||
| Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN |
Free (SNI)
TLS support includes full TLS Dynamic Record Sizing and ECDSA support per Q1 2017
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| Token authentication | ||
| Geo blocking | ||
| Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content | ||
| Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content | ||
| IP white/blacklisting |
Support
| Customer support | BelugaCDN | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation | Yes, public | Yes, but not public |
| Humans | Basic support (setup & troubleshooting: M-F, 9AM-5PM EST) is included for all accounts. Platinum (monthly spend more than $500) accounts receive priority. Enterprise customers receive phone support (w/ custom SLA). |