CDN for Apps
If you’re building a app, which for example uses any kind of live data feed from your site like JSON or XML, each time the app loads on someones device – that makes a call to your server to grab the data.
Your app gets featured one day on the app store homepage, and you get 1.5 million downloads within a few hours that day, which is great! But that’s one heck of a lot of extra requests for your server to deal with and it starts grinding to a halt, people lose interest in your app or even worse, start giving it negative reviews? All of your hard work could go to waste as you didn’t think about scaling.
A CDN is an EASY way for app developers to build really hugely scalable apps. As a CDN mitigates the load away from your server by mirroring content (such as JSON feeds) to a global network of servers so not only does it allow you to scale up – it also speeds up the experience for the end user as the data is pulled from a location close to them.
Case Study
Here’s a little case study of what we mean – A weather app! The app makes a request to your server to get the weather for NYC, which is updated once every hour. For arguments sake, we’ll say the data endpoint for your app is ‘api.getweatherapp.com/usa/newyork.json’. JSON returned describes the various data points for your app to display New York’s current weather.
JSON is dynamically generated by PHP/Ruby/Node based on information in your database and gets 10,000 requests per hour, but when your app is featured in the app store, this increases to 100,000 requests per hour, causing slow response times.
You can either go out and buy a new server (spending significantly more) or you can implement a CDN. Update your app, so it calls ‘cdn.getweatherapp.com/usa/newyork.json’ so users never actually hit your server, instead the latest version of the New York data is cached on the CDN’s edge locations, mirroring what’s on your origin server. You then set the cache expiry to 30 minutes, meaning they will always serve up the most recent data to the user.
All thats happening here is the ‘cdn.getweatherapp.com‘ is pointed to our CDN which is just mirroring or ‘pulling’ content from your origin which is ‘api.getweatherapp.com‘, so that the URL structure stays the same.
By implementing a CDN you’re immediately making your app future proof. CDNify can easily cope with any levels of traffic you can throw at it, meaning when your app gets featured your users get a lighting fast experience all round!
Features
SSL Network: Upload your own SSL certificate and securely serve your app’s content from a branded domain at no additional monthly cost, for example cdn.myawesomeapp.com. If you don’t have a custom SSL certificate, contact CDNify Support and we’ll help you get setup.
Global Network: Serve your content to users all over the world – including USA, Europe, and Asia as standard. Our geographically located servers are positioned to get your your blog in front of your users faster, no matter where they are based. For a full list of locations, check out our network page.
Fast Files: There’s nothing worse when using a web or mobile app only to find that you’re hanging around to wait for files to load. CDNify grabs those files and disperses them across its network, delivering them at super fast speeds. As soon as users start using your app, they get served content without having to wait.
Crash Resistance: Being featured in the app store will bring in mass amounts of traffic, if you’re not prepared it can cause the worst thing to happen…. crashes! Don’t let that happen, instead use CDNify to offload content to edge servers around the globe, then serve them from the nearest ones closest to the user to ensure your app is always online and crash free.
Real-time Stats: Don’t be left in the dark when it comes to statistics for your app, instead view real-time figures so you know precisely who’s using your service. With CDNify’s stats service you can review your most popular files, see which countries you get the most requests from, and quickly get an overview of your data usage.
Benefits
- Geographical Locations: Servers are placed all over the world from America, Europe, and Asia, ensuring your content is delivered to users no matter their location.
- Affordable: Starting at $10/m, we offer one of the most affordable and quality CDN services on the market, with the option to upgrade/downgrade at the drop of a hat.
- Security: Send content safely and securely to your visitors, giving them a piece of mind when they use your app.
- Setup: No fuss – Get setup with CDNify within a few minutes by following our guides over at CDNify Learn.
Have confidence in your app – Implement a CDN so you’re reassured that it’s performing at it’s peak, knowing that you’re ready to scale at a moments notice.