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Lumen versus BelugaCDN

Easily compare Lumen and BelugaCDN 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 BelugaCDN logo

Company

Company Lumen BelugaCDN
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. 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.

Products

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Product Lumen BelugaCDN
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? CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery Only delivery of the HTTP video streams, no transcoding or transmuxing
Video on demandDelivery of on demand video CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery Pseudo-streaming (progressive streaming), byte range requests support
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 CDN Mesh Delivery for Enterprise Available upon request. Extra costs apply
Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers Edge Compute

Network

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

Region Lumen BelugaCDN
North America 28 13
Latin America 11 1
Europe 35 4
Russia & CIS 0 0
Asia excl. China 7 5
China 0 0
Oceania 5 1
Middle East 4 0
Africa 3 0

Pricing

Pricing & contract duration Lumen BelugaCDN
Minimum contract term Unknown None
Minimum monthly costs Unknown $5
Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests Unknown 5000 requests per GB included. Overages $0.0035 per 10k requests
Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred Unknown None
NA/EU traffic (low volume) Unknown $0.01 per GB
APAC traffic (low volume) Unknown Unknown
LATAM traffic (low volume) Unknown Unknown

Features

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Web acceleration Lumen BelugaCDN
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 Often instant, sometimes a few 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 Global Anycasted IP available, but Beluga recommends against it
HTTP/2
HTTP/3
WebSockets
IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6?
Compression CDN Guide: CompressionReduce file size for faster delivery Resend from origin, or compress on edge Compress on the fly
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
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 FTP, SFTP, rsync. Storage costs apply Available upon request
Cache control - CDN caching Honor origin sent headers or configure overrides
Cache control - client caching
Serve Stale CDN Guide: Serve StaleCDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble
Purge CDN Guide: PurgeInvalidate or delete cached objects on CDN Instant Instant
Purge - capabilities Purge all but not purge by directory or tag or header Purge all and purge using regex
Analytics All metrics are aggregated every 10 seconds, exported in real-time
Log files Real-time export to Elastic Search or Redis. FTP.
tooltip 10 million requests/month free, $0.50/million events exported overage
API Purge, analytics, configuration Purge, analytics, configuration
HTTPS & Content Protection Lumen BelugaCDN
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)
tooltip TLS support includes full TLS Dynamic Record Sizing and ECDSA support per Q1 2017
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 BelugaCDN
Documentation Yes, but not public Yes, 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).