Company

Company	CacheFly	Lumen
Short profile	Launched in 2002, CacheFly developed the world's first TCP-anycast based content delivery network. CacheFly has a focus on optimizing the CDN for throughput and has steadily built out the network to now have 50+ POPs on 6 continents. CacheFly provides a 100% uptime SLA and takes pride in acting as 'consultants to our customers'.	Lumen (formerly known as Centurlink 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

• = Yes
• = Sort of/partially
• = No
• = Unknown

Product	CacheFly	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?	Ultra Low Latency Video Streaming	CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery
Video on demandDelivery of on demand video	VoD	CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery
Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization	Smart Image 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	Fully custom solution	CDN Mesh Delivery for Enterprise
Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers	Custom solutions available for edge scripting	Edge Compute

Network

Region	CacheFly	Lumen
North America	17	28
Latin America	11	10
Europe	14	35
Russia & CIS	2	0
Asia excl. China	7	7
China	2	0
Oceania	3	5
Middle-East	5	4
Africa	1	2

Pricing

Pricing & contract duration	CacheFly	Lumen
Minimum contract term	1 month	Unknown
Minimum monthly costs	$595 (35 TB/m)	Unknown
Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests	No	Unknown
Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred	Yes	Unknown
NA/EU traffic (low volume)	n/a	Unknown
APAC traffic (low volume)	n/a	Unknown
LATAM traffic (low volume)	n/a	Unknown

Features

• = Yes
• = Sort of/partially
• = No
• = Extra costs
• = Unknown

Web acceleration	CacheFly	Lumen
Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing.		Not yet, but coming soon.
Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs?	5 - 180s depending on the change	No longer than 15 minutes - Often instant
Apex/root domain OK No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com	Must purchase dedicated IP Or use DNS provider that can do CNAME flattening	No global Anycast
HTTP/2
IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6?
Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery	Resend from origin, or compress on edge	Resend from origin only Does not compress on the edge
Origin pull - protocolHTTP only or HTTPS possible too?	HTTP and HTTPS Match client to edge request protocol is possible	HTTP and HTTPS.
Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value?	Set specific Host header value or forward value from client to edge request	Configure specific other Host header CDN can also forward client request Host header to origin
Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP
Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin	FTP. Some storage free, more storage available at additional costs	FTP, SFTP, rsync. Storage costs apply
Cache control - CDN caching	Origin headers are honored. Can config overrides
Cache control - client caching	Origin headers are forwarded to client. Can config overrides
Serve Stale CDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble	CacheFly support team can activate this edge behaviour
Purge Invalidate or delete cached objects on CDN	Instant (under 5s)	Instant
Purge - capabilities	Purge all and by directory, not by tag or header	Purge all but not purge by directory or tag or header
Analytics	Near real-time, lots of metrics
Log files	Pull via FTP or have pushed to customer endpoint Logs are 5 minutes delayed
API	Purge, analytics, configuration	Purge, analytics, configuration (but limited)

HTTPS & Content Protection	CacheFly	Lumen
CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net	Free
Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate	Custom pricing
Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN	EV cert and/or Non-SNI possible
Token authentication	Self-service activation/configuration
Geo blocking	Self-service activation/configuration. Predefined and custom rules
Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content
Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content	Available in a Custom/Private CDN scenario
IP white/blacklisting	Custom rules can be scripted (by support team at no extra charge)

Support

Customer support	CacheFly	Lumen
Documentation	Yes, public	Yes, but not public
Humans	All customers get 24/7 email and phone support and a dedicated implementation/solutions engineer. Extra support ('Elite managed') available at a fee with SLA for support response time