A Content Delivery Network (CDN) distributes your media and stores your assets on numerous servers around the world to improve load time. Assets load faster because users are automatically directed to the server of the nearest location. Bynder uses Amazon CloudFront as CDN provider.
Read more about CDN and the advantages below.
What is a CDN?
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) ensures fast delivery of files across the globe. For clients that support web shops with customers shopping around the world, this feature has proved to be crucial. By using CDN, we can ensure lightning-fast loading times from anywhere in the world. This means that no matter where your users or visitors are located geographically, they will never have to wait for a page or media item to load. When users somewhere in the world visit their brand portal or a website, and this website is fed by images from Bynder, then the images that are loaded on the site are directly stored in the nearest edge location.
CDN distributes your media and stores web versions on numerous servers around the world. The biggest advantage for you is that your visitors are automatically directed to the server of the nearest location. Technically speaking, this will lower the page latency and provide a lower load time. Check the use case below to see how CDN is put into practice.
Why should I use a CDN?
The key principle behind the use of CDN is to solve the problem of latency. Latency is the delay between the moment you request an asset and the moment it appears on your screen. In the case of Bynder, latency would only happen if the people who need to access the assets are geographically distant from the hosting server.
Bynder leverages multiple hosting servers around the world: Frankfurt for Europe & Middle East, US East Coast & US West Coast for North & Central America and Tokyo for Asia Pacific. This structure allows Bynder to serve assets at a high speed around the globe, with close to no latency. However, in some cases, certain clients may require ultra-high performance levels for the delivery of their assets.
For example, if a client is located in California, Unites States the hosting server will be US West Coast. In order to maximize performance, the client can make use of CDN in order to make sure that the assets are served as quickly as possible.
Supported CDN providers
CloudFront CDN
Bynder uses the CDN network of Amazon Web Services (AWS) called CloudFront. Cloudfront has servers worldwide and is built for high availability (99.999 percent uptime). CloudFront is aware if a zone isn’t responding and then it caches the images across multiple endpoints. We use flexible hosting (Amazon Web Services) and autoscaling, so we can easily and instantly scale up our server capacity automatically.
The expiry time of our CDN offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) is 24 hours.
The download speed depends on a variety of factors, such as your internet speed, location and other conditions that influence the connection between your device and CloudFront. Read more about CloudFront here. You can find more information on their quotas, previously known as limits, here.
Other CDN providers
Bynder is also compatible with other CDN providers, such as Akamai. If you decide to use a provider other than Amazon, you need to set up and configure the CDN on your side. When it's up and running, contact your Customer Success Manager so that we can do the necessary updates on our end to have Bynder utilize the CDN of your choice. See the example here for more configuration details.
Downloading files through CDN
You can use CDN for downloading assets from the Asset Library overview, the Asset detail page (AI/INDD files, single derivatives or all files, additional files) and the Collections view.
Note
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The first download through CDN is usually slower, but then the speed increases.
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When using CDN the maximum file size you can download is 20GB.
We can also customize Bynder so that you can use CDN with Bynder Transfer. In this way, when you share files with Bynder Express, the recipients can download the files using CDN when they click on the download link in the notification they receive.
Upload to a specific region
Bynder supports various data hosting regions. We can also set up Bynder to upload your data to a specific region. See Data hosting regions supported by AWS and Bynder.
Share private and public files through CDN
If users have specific permissions, they can download an original file through CDN if an asset is marked as public on the Asset detail page, but the link to the image is available for 15 minutes only for security reasons. Alternatively, you can retrieve a permanent link via the API if the asset is marked as public.
The same goes for thumbnails. All the thumbnails and web versions are public in Bynder and, as such, distributable through CDN. However, we can customize your portal so that thumbnails will become private and their link will become signed and expire after 15 minutes.
How to enable and configure CDN?
To make sure you get most out of our CDN solutions, we would like to discuss your use case and technical requirements. Together we can determine which CDN solution best fits your situation. Contact your Customer Success Manager to start using CDN.
In case you want to make use of your own custom CDN and facilitate public assets have a look at the example below.
Configure Public Assets for a Custom CDN
Follow the minimal setup below to serve public assets via your custom CDN. The below configuration page is from AWS. The wording may vary slightly on your side when setting this up for a different CDN provider.
Path pattern
This is the default URL path that we use for public assets. Fill in: /m/*
Origin or origin group
Select the URL of your Bynder portal. For example:
eulocal.getbynder.com
Viewer Protocol Policy
We only support the HTTPS protocol, so make sure to redirect HTTP to HTTPS.
Allowed HTTP Methods
Select GET and HEAD. Other HTTP methods are not necessary.
Whitelist Headers
Add Host and Origin. Optionally other headers can be added as well.
Minimum and Maximum TTL
With the TTL values you can configure when you want the cached asset to expire. Once expired the asset has to be requested from the server again.
Billing
Depending on the amount of traffic used you may be charged for CDN usage. Read more about our fair use policy here.
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