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. Assets are also automatically refreshed using Automatic Invalidation when an asset is updated in Bynder. Bynder uses Amazon CloudFront as the CDN provider, however you can customize this to use your own CDN, such as Akamai.
A 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 provides a faster load time.
Bynder supports various data hosting regions. We leverage 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. We can set up Bynder to upload your data to a specific region. See Data hosting regions supported by AWS and Bynder.
Bynder uses the CDN network of Amazon Web Services (AWS) called CloudFront. Amazon Cloudfront has servers worldwide and is built for high availability (99.999 percent uptime). Amazon 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 default expiry time offered by Amazon CloudFront is 24 hours, however Bynder has implemented Automatic Invalidation. With Automatic Invalidation, Bynder automatically invalidates the Amazon CloudFront CDN URLs when you upload a new version to an existing asset. You will no longer have to wait for its cache to expire. The assets you integrated externally using Amazon CloudFront will always reflect the latest version.
When downloading assets from the asset library you are using the CDN. . We can also customize Bynder so that you can use CDN with Bynder Express so that 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. If users have the download original file permission, they can download an original file through CDN if an asset is marked as public on the Asset Detail Page (the link to the image is available for limited time only for security reasons). Alternatively, you can retrieve a permanent link via the API if the asset is marked as public. When assets are marked as public, all the thumbnails and web versions are public in Bynder and distributable through CDN. If necessary, we can customize your portal so that thumbnails will become private and their link will become signed and expire after a limited time.
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The first download through CDN is usually slower, but then the speed increases. 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 Amazon CloudFront. Read more about Amazon CloudFront here. You can find more information on their quotas, previously known as limits, here.
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When using CDN, the maximum file size you can download is 20GB.
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Depending on the amount of traffic used you may be charged for CDN usage. Read more about our fair use policy here
Important
Our Support team can only assist with Amazon CloudFront related questions.
Bynder is also compatible with other CDN providers, such as Akamai. If you decide to use a provider other than Amazon CloudFront, you will need to set up and configure the CDN on your side. When it's up and running, please contact your Customer Success Manager to make the necessary updates on our end.
Note
Configuring a custom CDN will not replace our Amazon CloudFront setup but work alongside it. Amazon CloudFront will be used for all portal activity, like downloading assets and displaying thumbnails. Your custom CDN will host your assets for web/API use.
Caution
Please see below for limitations you may experience when using Other CDN Providers
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Cache invalidations: If you decide to delete an asset that should not be public, Bynder would need to manually invalidate the public link, as it would not occur automatically. If this occurs frequently we recommend building an integration to make this process automatic.
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Assets versioning: Is invalidated. For example when a new version of an asset is uploaded it will not be automatically updated in your portal.
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Usage tracking: Real-time metrics is a feature that allows you to keep up-to-date with what is happening in your portal, i.e. what assets are being viewed or downloaded by users. When using a custom CDN this feature will not work for DAT or public links.
If you’d like to make use of your own custom CDN and facilitate public assets, follow the setup below.
The below configuration page is from AWS. The wording may vary slightly on your side when setting this up for a different CDN provider.
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Path pattern - This is the default URL path that we use for public assets. Fill in: /m/* For DAT use transform/*
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Origin or origin group - Select the URL of your Bynder portal. For example: eulocal.getbynder.com
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Viewer Protocol Policy- We only support the HTTPS protocol, so make sure to redirect HTTP to HTTPS.
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Allowed HTTP Methods - Select GET and HEAD. Other HTTP methods are not necessary.
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Whitelist Headers - Add Host and Origin. Optionally other headers can be added as well.
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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.
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