Anycast for Content Delivery Networks

Content delivery network (CDN) providers frequently use anycast to route traffic to their edge servers, providing their end users with fast performance and zero downtime. CDN providers use anycast to route users at the network level to the closest available edge server. These edge servers provide users with services that include static content caching, reverse proxy, OTT for streaming media, and/or offloading SSL. In the event one location needs to be taken offline for maintenance, upgrades, or even just crashes, users are seamlessly routed to the next, closest available location to ensure maximum availability and uptime. 

Many CDN providers utilize DNS to route users to the optimal content server. For this deployment model, our anycast network routes incoming user requests to the nearest available DNS server, often hosted on our virtual servers for the lowest possible latency.