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Lumen versus CloudFront

Easily compare Lumen and CloudFront for POP locations, products, pricing, features & support. We hope this helps you better understand the similarities and differences between these content delivery networks.

Lumen logo CloudFront logo

Company

Company Lumen CloudFront
Short profile 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. CloudFront is the CDN of AWS (Amazon Web Services), the world's largest cloud services provider. CloudFront offers a mature set of content delivery products and has a big network of POPs on many continents. Solid documentation and APIs make CloudFront a developer-friendly CDN.

Products

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Product Lumen CloudFront
Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ... CDN Edge Compute Dynamic Content Delivery
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? CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery Streaming Media
Video on demandDelivery of on demand video CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery
Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization part of CDN Edge Compute
DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain AWS Route53
WAFWeb Application Firewall WAF AWS WAF
Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. Lumen DDoS Hyper (on-demand) and DDoS Mitigation Service AWS Shield
Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs CDN Mesh Delivery for Enterprise
Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers Edge Compute Lambda@Edge

Network

How many POP locations do Lumen and CloudFront have in different parts of the world?

Region Lumen CloudFront
North America 28 19
Latin America 11 7
Europe 35 31
Russia & CIS 0 0
Asia excl. China 7 18
China 0 4
Oceania 5 5
Middle East 4 5
Africa 3 4

Pricing

Pricing & contract duration Lumen CloudFront
Minimum contract term Unknown None
Minimum monthly costs Unknown None
Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests Unknown $0.0075 - $0.022 per 10k requests
Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred Unknown $0.02 - $0.16 per GB (free if origin is AWS)
NA/EU traffic (low volume) Unknown $0.085 per GB
APAC traffic (low volume) Unknown $0.12 per GB (India: $0.109)
LATAM traffic (low volume) Unknown $0.11 per GB

Features

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Web acceleration Lumen CloudFront
Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. Not yet, but coming soon.
Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? No longer than 15 minutes - Often instant ~10 minutes
Apex/root domain OK Blog: Root domain on CDN and performanceNo performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com Available with Section product for an additional fee Only if used together with AWS Route53
HTTP/2 HTTP/2 announcement (Sep 2016)
HTTP/3 HTTP/3 announcement
WebSockets Using WebSockets with CloudFront distributions
IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? IPv6 support announcement (Oct 2016)
Compression CDN Guide: CompressionReduce file size for faster delivery Resend from origin, or compress on edge Resend from origin, or compress on edge
tooltip CloudFront can compress many content types on the edge and supports Brotli
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
tooltip CDN can also forward client request Host header to origin
Can't configure specific other Host header
Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP Origin Shield docs
Waiting RoomDuring peak traffic, route users to a virtual waiting room Virtual Waiting Room on AWS
Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin FTP, SFTP, rsync. Storage costs apply
Cache control - CDN caching
Cache control - client caching
Serve Stale CDN Guide: Serve StaleCDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble Supports Cache-Control extensions
Purge CDN Guide: PurgeInvalidate or delete cached objects on CDN Instant Purge Speed
Purge - capabilities Purge all but not purge by directory or tag or header Purge all and by directory/file type (wildcards)
Analytics Amazon CloudFront Reports & Analytics
Log files Only delivered to S3
tooltip CloudFront delivers access logs for a distribution up to several times an hour
API Purge, analytics, configuration Purge, analytics, configuration
HTTPS & Content Protection Lumen CloudFront
CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net Free (not SNI)
Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate
Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN Free (SNI) or $600/m for non-SNI
Token authentication Serving Private Content through CloudFront
Geo blocking Restricting the Geographic Distribution of Your Content
Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content Use AWS WAF for Referer Checking
Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content
IP white/blacklisting Use AWS WAF to Block IP Addresses

Support

Customer support Lumen CloudFront
Documentation Yes, but not public Yes, public. API docs
Humans Community support is free. Email and phone support (AWS Support) available at extra costs