Efficiently distributing web content to your intended audience just got easier! Internap’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) has received a significant web acceleration upgrade, giving you a wide range of options to deliver content without sacrificing the security and control that you expect. Based on Nginx^TM, our new high-performance HTTP caching engine provides even more reliability than before under heavy traffic loads. In addition, our new 100% SSD caching infrastructure has made our CDN even faster and more scalable.

Improved management tools and new features
This upgrade includes a variety of new features aimed to provide all the tools you need to customize and manage your sites and content. Use these features through the user-friendly interface design of our portal, which allows you to upload, manage and deliver all of your media formats through a single, easy-to-navigate system. The portal also provides robust analytics and sophisticated reporting all from a single dashboard.

Our CDN upgrade includes more than 30 new features, including:

• Cascading origins: Our CDN will check multiple customer origins, in the order you specify, for the right data so that your users can always find the content they are looking for.
• Error page customization: Improve the user experience of your content by customizing the error pages in your site by setting personalized messaging for 400 and 500 errors.
• IP and Referrer whitelist/blacklist restrictions: As deep linking continues to proliferate through the Internet, use our whitelist and blacklist restrictions to protect your sensitive content and ensure it falls in the right hands.
• Per-site default expiration time: Quickly and easily customize your cache behavior by setting an expiration date for caching.
• Custom and Shared SSL certificates: Our SSL certificates are more flexible than ever! Configure unlimited sites and origins that match Internap’s shared certificate.

Technology, product and pricing integration
Together with our Managed Internet Route Optimizer™ (MIRO) technology, which dynamically selects the most efficient network route, Internap’s CDN delivers your content to end users fast. Edge caching and IP route optimization technologies are highly complementary. The CDN carries static content (e.g., image files, web objects, software downloads) closer to end users so those bits don’t need to travel long distances with every click. Our route optimized IP handles delivery of content from the origin to the edge or end users when the content is more dynamic. Not only that, bundling our IP and CDN with a blend of virtual and bare-metal cloud, hosting and colocation services can further extend your content’s reach by placing compute, memory and storage across the globe.

In addition, if you are one of our Agile customers and have already enrolled in Universal Transfer, all traffic, including IP and CDN, will conveniently be billed as part of your universal transfer account.

This release is the result of a lot of work over the past 24 months, so we are particularly excited to bring you this great news! We hope you enjoy the new features and benefits of this enhanced solution. Find out more here.

As a fast growing mobile advertising platform, AppLovin processes more than 7 billion ad requests and moves 10 terabytes of data through their system every day. Their solution enables brands to provide highly personalized recommendations, offers and promotions to mobile consumers. By combining known shopping behavior with data insights from customers’ interactions across multiple screens – smartphone, tablet and computer – AppLovin delivers accurate and effective ad targeting and retargeting.

For Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) like AppLovin, timing is everything. With a direct correlation between speed of ad delivery and conversion rate, ads must be served quickly – within 100 milliseconds of the initial request – to reach the target demographic. As an example, if a mobile user is looking at travel deals via a smartphone app, the AppLovin solution can instantly retarget based on past consumer behavior. This dynamic, targeted approach increases the likelihood that a consumer will find what they’re looking for and make a purchase. Analyzing high volumes of data and making smart decisions within a short timeframe requires a reliable, high-performance Internet infrastructure with geographic diversity and scalability.

To accommodate their growing business, AppLovin needed the flexibility to expand into global locations without sacrificing performance. They looked to replace their virtual cloud environment with bare-metal cloud in order to achieve this. MoPub, an ad exchange company and Internap customer, suggested that AppLovin evaluate Internap solutions, and AppLovin now uses Internap Agile services in Santa Clara, New York and Amsterdam.

Geographic diversity
With long-term plans for worldwide scale, AppLovin can expand into Internap’s global locations as their business grows. The ability to establish an infrastructure that is physically closer to customers, partners and RTB (Real Time Bidding) exchanges reduces latency and helps AppLovin respond to and process ad requests within 100ms. Learn more about the dynamics of ad exchanges with DSPs and SSPs here.

Price performance
After running tests in their own environment, AppLovin found that their ad serving front-end application could handle at least 3x more traffic and accommodate increased memory capacity by using Internap bare-metal servers, compared with their previous virtualized cloud environment. Using fewer servers with less resource sharing resulted in reduced volatility and better performance across all tiers of their infrastructure.

Reliability and service relationship
In addition to the global data center locations and high performance bare-metal servers, Internap provides AppLovin with 24/7 global support. Proactive communication and responsiveness are essential to AppLovin, even more so than a SLA or uptime guarantee. While many large-scale public cloud providers have support and customization limitations, Internap’s knowledgeable support team makes sure AppLovin has the hardware and equipment that best fits their needs.

The combination of Internap bare-metal servers, global presence and reliable 24/7 support enable AppLovin to deliver measurable results to their customers. With the right infrastructure in place, AppLovin is well-positioned to scale their business in the future and operate with low latency and better performance.

Fluid IT Services offers small and medium-sized businesses a full range of IT solutions, from hands-on desktop support to senior engineering, networking, security and even virtual CIO services. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Fluid acts as a full-service IT department for many of their clients, providing direct access to an experienced, knowledgeable IT team.

While larger organizations have in-house experts capable of making informed IT decisions and procuring the necessary technology, SMBs often do not have the resources to manage IT themselves. Migrating to the cloud is a great way for SMBs to simplify management of their IT and alleviate worries about hardware maintenance, business continuity and security, but most clouds are designed for enterprise-level companies. In 2011, Fluid built their own cloud to better meet the needs of the SMB market.

Fluid strives to reduce the IT burden on its clients and provide future-proof infrastructure that will stay relevant even as technology changes. Since transitioning applications to the cloud is central to their service offering, Fluid requires a reliable IT infrastructure with secure, scalable colocation services and a high-performance network.

Future-proof infrastructure
Technology changes quickly, and Fluid needs to stay ahead of the curve to make sure they can meet the evolving needs of their customers. As new regulations and security requirements emerge, particularly around HIPAA and SEC compliance, Fluid must provide the right infrastructure in the right locations to accommodate these requirements.

Company-owned and operated data centers
After more than 7 years with Sungard, Fluid evaluated several providers in their search for company-owned facilities. While many providers claim to have nationwide or global data centers, these are often sister sites that could potentially change ownership and negatively impact customers. Today, Fluid has a private caged environment in Internap’s Plano data center and recently expanded to a second location in San Jose, California.

Faster performance and consistent uptime
With Internap’s Performance IP^TM service and Managed Internet Route Optimizer^TM (MIRO) technology, Fluid’s customers benefit from faster Internet performance and a reliable, highly available network. Access to multiple carriers provides consistent uptime and allows Fluid’s customers to focus on their core business instead of worrying about connectivity and Internet performance.

Long-term relationship and support
Not only did Fluid require a provider that could meet their clients’ needs, they wanted a true partner for their business. The relationship with Internap is a key factor in Fluid’s ability to provide cloud solutions to their SMB clients.

With data center services and Performance IP from Internap, Fluid IT Services can focus on taking care of their customers and making sure they provide an IT environment that can handle the demands of the changing business landscape – today and in the future.

At GDC 2014, we had a great experience learning about the exciting trends and advancements taking place in the gaming industry. When we weren’t busy trying out the new VR headsets or attending informative sessions, we enjoyed interacting with the attendees and learning firsthand about the challenges faced by online game developers. Many of these conversations revolved around the topic of gaming infrastructure, and particularly scalable game design.

Before you launch
How does a game developer plan for a massive game release? Whether you’re working on a new game or redesigning an existing one, you need to consider scalable game design early. You are going to eventually have to solve this problem, so it’s best to go ahead and address it at the beginning.

Here are a few things to consider about your network architecture to successfully launch a scalable online game.

• Tiering – We recommended a multi-tiered architecture to allow scalability at the web and app level and still get performance out of the database. Web tier, app tier, and database tier.
• Database design – Decide if you are going to have a distributed database system or a SQL-based set up.
• CDN – With millions of very small files, you’re probably better off using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) for file delivery, especially if you hope to reach a worldwide audience.

What is your foundation architecture?
Your MMOG needs to accommodate your average number of daily concurrent users as well as sudden traffic spikes. If you are truly building for scale, it’s important to establish a foundation architecture of core servers that are always on to handle your baseline, but with the ability to burst into the cloud when the number of users increases. Building a foundation architecture is much more cost effective than building for peak usage and paying for resources that aren’t needed during normal traffic volume. A hybrid solution which allows to you burst into the cloud or a bare-metal cloud solution is a good option for scaling up and down quickly in a cost-effective way.

Speed matters
While low latency is always important, it’s critical when building a scalable online game. One of the GDC attendees said he was met with a “blank stare” when he asked his hosting provider to increase the ping speed between servers. We politely suggested finding a company that provides better support and understands why he was asking the question in the first place.

One of our goals at Internap is to provide online game developers with the infrastructure they need to launch and support their games. Whether you are building a new game, or redesigning a current game, it’s important to understand your network architecture and make sure you have the capabilities in place to achieve scale.

Learn more about the infrastructure for scalable game design by viewing our presentation with Hi-Rez Studios from GDC.