Company

Company	Lumen	Akamai
Short profile	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.	Akamai is one of the oldest CDNs and generally considered to be the largest global CDN. They have 'servers everywhere' and a wide range of products and services. The company is actively involved in Let's Encrypt and is pushing HTTP/2 adoption.

Products

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

Product	Lumen	Akamai
Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ...	CDN Edge Compute	Dynamic Site Accelerator
Small file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of small files (file size <1 MB)	CDN and/or CDN Edge Compute	Ion
Large file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of large files (file size >1 MB)		Download Delivery
Live videoDelivery of live video. RTMP? Transcoding/transmuxing?	CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery	Adaptive Media Delivery
Video on demandDelivery of on demand video	CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery
Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization	part of CDN Edge Compute	Image & Video Manager
DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain		Edge DNS
WAFWeb Application Firewall	WAF	Web Application Protector
Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this.	Lumen DDoS Hyper (on-demand) and DDoS Mitigation Service	Kona DDoS Defender
Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs	CDN Mesh Delivery for Enterprise
Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers	Edge Compute	EdgeWorkers

Network

Region	Lumen	Akamai
North America	28	Unknown
Latin America	10	Unknown
Europe	35	Unknown
Russia & CIS	0	Unknown
Asia excl. China	7	Unknown
China	0	Unknown
Oceania	5	Unknown
Middle-East	4	Unknown
Africa	2	Unknown

Pricing

Pricing & contract duration	Lumen	Akamai
Minimum contract term	Unknown	12 months
Minimum monthly costs	Unknown	Unknown
Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests	Unknown	Unknown
Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred	Unknown	Unknown
NA/EU traffic (low volume)	Unknown	Unknown
APAC traffic (low volume)	Unknown	Unknown
LATAM traffic (low volume)	Unknown	Unknown

Features

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

Web acceleration	Lumen	Akamai
Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing.	Not yet, but coming soon.	Can't sign up and get started. Must talk to sales.
Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs?	No longer than 15 minutes - Often instant
Apex/root domain OK No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com	No global Anycast	If you also use their Fast DNS for your domain
HTTP/2
IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6?
Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery	Resend from origin only Does not compress on the edge	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
Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP
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 serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble
Purge Invalidate or delete cached objects on CDN	Instant
Purge - capabilities	Purge all but not purge by directory or tag or header
Analytics
Log files
API	Purge, analytics, configuration (but limited)

HTTPS & Content Protection	Lumen	Akamai
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
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	Lumen	Akamai
Documentation	Yes, but not public	Yes, but not public
Humans