Easily compare Lumen and Akamai 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 | Lumen | Akamai |
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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. | 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
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= Yes
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= Sort of/partially
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= No
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= Unknown
Product | Lumen | Akamai |
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Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ... |
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Small file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of small files (file size <1 MB) |
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Large file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of large files (file size >1 MB) |
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Live videoDelivery of live video. RTMP? Transcoding/transmuxing? |
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Video on demandDelivery of on demand video |
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Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization |
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DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain |
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WAFWeb Application Firewall |
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Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. |
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Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs |
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Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers |
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Network
Region | Lumen | Akamai |
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North America | 28 | Unknown |
Latin America | 11 | Unknown |
Europe | 35 | Unknown |
Russia & CIS | 0 | Unknown |
Asia excl. China | 7 | Unknown |
China | 0 | Unknown |
Oceania | 5 | Unknown |
Middle-East | 4 | Unknown |
Africa | 3 | Unknown |
Pricing
Pricing & contract duration | Lumen | Akamai |
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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
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= Yes
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= Sort of/partially
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= No
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= Extra costs
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= Unknown
Web acceleration | Lumen | Akamai |
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Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. |
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Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? |
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Apex/root domain OK |
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HTTP/2 |
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IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? |
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Compression |
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Origin pull - protocolHTTP only or HTTPS possible too? |
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Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value? |
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Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP |
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Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin |
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Cache control - CDN caching |
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Cache control - client caching |
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Serve Stale |
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Purge |
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Purge - capabilities |
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Analytics |
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Log files |
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API |
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HTTPS & Content Protection | Lumen | Akamai |
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CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net |
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Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate |
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Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN |
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Token authentication |
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Geo blocking |
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Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content |
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Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content |
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IP white/blacklisting |
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Support
Customer support | Lumen | Akamai |
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Documentation |
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Humans |
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