Introducing CNAME flattening: Multi CDN on steroids

At mlytics, we strive to find innovative ways to help our users to improve the performance of their website, even if we’re talking about milliseconds, and this is exactly the story behind the new feature.

Today we’re introducing CNAME flattening, a new feature that will vastly improve the performance of the Multi CDN optimization process.

What is CNAME flattening?

Part of the activation process, when a domain is added to the mlytics platform, the system will assign a CNAME, and users are required to create a CNAME record with it on their DNS. Once activated, all requests will be directed to the mlytics platform and the system will assign the best CDN based on the geo and performance data, then return the CNAME of the chosen CDN.

To visualize the process, it looks like this:

The original process looks like this

So when we’re looking at this, we can break the CNAME resolving process into:

1. DNS CNAME to mlytics (request to mlytics)
2. CDN CNAME provided by mlytics (request to CDN)

Technically speaking, using a CNAME record will add another layer of indirection, so the lookup time will take longer than usual, not to mention if there are two. Although the benefits of using Multi CDN can mitigate such a disadvantage, our team has been researching new methods to improve this.

So the idea is simple: to streamline the second process above by resolving the CNAME directly on the mlytics’s end and provide the CDN IP address to the user directly. This has decreased the total CNAME resolving time by a whopping 60%!

Here’s how it looks like:

We’re shaving off a process off the flow

This feature is now officially live for all users without additional activation required. Try it out and test for yourself today.

Learn more about mlytics.