Easily compare Medianova and Lumen 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 | Medianova | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| Short profile | Medianova has grown to become a global, established player with a strong presence in the Middle-East and Europe. Medianova uses modern technologies like their patent pending Dockerized CDN Platform, BBR, Brotli and Anycast and offers a wide range of content delivery solutions from their 50+ data centers. | 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. |
Products
| Product | Medianova | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ... | Dynamic Site Acceleration | CDN Edge Compute |
| Small file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of small files (file size <1 MB) | Content Delivery and Optimization | 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? | Internet Live Streaming | CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery |
| Video on demandDelivery of on demand video | Video on Demand | CDN and/or CDN Mesh Delivery |
| Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization | Image Optimization | part of CDN Edge Compute |
| DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain | ||
| WAFWeb Application Firewall | WAF | 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 | Private CDN | CDN Mesh Delivery for Enterprise |
| Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers | Edge Compute |
Network
How many POP locations do Medianova and Lumen have in different parts of the world?
| Region | Medianova | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| North America | 9 | 28 |
| Latin America | 1 | 11 |
| Europe | 11 | 35 |
| Russia & CIS | 1 | 0 |
| Asia excl. China | 1 | 7 |
| China | 0 | 0 |
| Oceania | 0 | 5 |
| Middle-East | 7 | 4 |
| Africa | 1 | 3 |
Pricing
| Pricing & contract duration | Medianova | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum contract term | 1 month | Unknown |
| Minimum monthly costs | Varies by product and service | 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) | Confidential, market competitive | Unknown |
| APAC traffic (low volume) | Confidential, market competitive | Unknown |
| LATAM traffic (low volume) | Not applicable | Unknown |
Features
| Web acceleration | Medianova | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. | Not yet, but coming soon. | |
| Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? | One to three minutes | No longer than 15 minutes - Often instant |
Apex/root domain OK  No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com |
Available with Section product for an additional fee | |
| HTTP/2 | ||
| WebSockets | ||
| IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? | ||
| Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery |
Compress on the fly. Brotli support! | 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? | Can be different from origin host |
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 | ||
| Waiting RoomDuring peak traffic, route users to a virtual waiting room | ||
| Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin | FTP, SFTP, Rsync | 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 |
Cache-Control extensions support | |
| Purge Invalidate or delete cached objects on CDN |
Instant. Purge all may take up to 1 minute | Instant |
| Purge - capabilities | Purge file paths, purge all | Purge all but not purge by directory or tag or header |
| Analytics | Near real-time | |
| Log files | Not by default, only on request | |
| API | Purge, analytics, configuration, encoding | Purge, analytics, configuration |
| HTTPS & Content Protection | Medianova | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | SNI | |
| Token authentication | ||
| Geo blocking | Streaming | |
| Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content | Streaming | |
| Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content | ||
| IP white/blacklisting | Streaming |
Support
| Customer support | Medianova | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation | Yes, public | Yes, but not public |
| Humans | All customers get 24/7 email support with 3 minutes response time and access to Technical Account Managers |