Choosing Between Multiple Content Delivery Networks and Load Balancing (Part V): Dyn Inc’s CDN Manager

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The other new company jumping into the Content Delivery Network arena is Dyn Inc. Dyn started out over 10 years ago providing home and small businesses users domain, email, and Internet infrastructure services (DynDNS), and over the last two years has been expanding their enterprise offering (Dynect). As a new provider to the CDN marketplace they're focused solely on CDN Load Balancing.

Being the only company offering a Load Balancing product that’s not an actual Content Delivery Network, they may have a leg up from the acceptance and market credibilty perspective. Dyn says that their CDN Manager is the most effective way for customers to maximize an end-user's web experience. They also claim their CDN Manager is the most effective way for customers to maximize the performance of their Content Delivery Networks, yet at the same time bring other providers into the mix.

Jeremy Hitchcock, Dyn's CEO says “Our development and introduction of the CDN Load Balancer was really driven by customer demand. Customers like Twitter, Homeaway, Zappos, Gigya and Wikia wanted a way to Load Balance their different CDN’s. There is no better way to build a product than from customer demand.”

Dyn's load balancer is also adjustable, with load balancing based on the weighted allocation of traffic, and geography. Let’s show some use cases:

Weighted Allocation – a customer can configure by region with X percentage of their traffic delivered by CDN 1, Y percentage delivered by CDN 2, Z percentage delivered by CDN 3, and so on. This feature allows Dyn's customers to manage their contracts with CDN providers much better and to take advantage of adjusting commitments.

Geography – Dyn's customer can configure traffic delivery to North American users using CDN 1, to Europe using CDN 2, to Asia/Pacific Rim using CDN 3, and so on. Dyn's customers can also leverage CDNs that have geographic expertise. For example, a customer could utilize CDNetwork's #1 position in Korea by purchasing a contract with CDNetworks combined with other providers to deliver content to Korea using CDNetworks and other traffic worldwide with other providers, all managed by the Dyn CDN Manager.

Although Dyn's CDN Manager does not yet have as many knobs and levers as other CDN Load Balancers discussed in this blog series, Jeremy Hitchcock says they’ll be coming in an updated release.

Even pundits like Jim Davis from Tier 1 Research have decided to weigh in on Dyn Inc’s CDN Manager.He has concluded that with this solution, added redundancy can become a key piece of the overall infrastructure mix at the CDN Level.

In the end, Dyn's CDN Manager helps ensure CDN Service Provider independence. It provides its users with choices and flexibility when it comes to matching their web site delivery business needs and requirements with the available options in the CDN market. We’re glad that Dyn Inc has decided to step into the CDN Load Balancing ring, and we welcome this traditionally outside the market provider. Many companies make credibility an important factor in purchasing decisions and having a provider who can offer an unbiased product will be important in the market's acceptance of Dyn's CDN Manager load balancing offering.

This concludes our blog series on Choosing Between Multiple CDN’s and CDN Load Balancing. We hope you enjoyed the series and found it useful. Please be sure to come back to www.CDNExpertOnline.com for more blog posts on the CDN Industry.