Dynamic site acceleration via Azure CDN

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With the explosion of social media, electronic commerce, and the hyper-personalized web, a rapidly
increasing percentage of the content served to end users is generated in real time. Users expect a
fast, reliable, and personalized web experience, independent of their browser, location, device, or
network. However, the very innovations that make these experiences so engaging also slow page
downloads and put the quality of the consumer experience at risk.
Standard content delivery network (CDN) capability includes the ability to cache files closer to end
users to speed up delivery of static files. However, with dynamic web applications, caching that
content in edge locations isn't possible because the server generates the content in response to user
behavior. Speeding up the delivery of such content is more complex than traditional edge caching
and requires an end-to-end solution that finely tunes each element along the entire data path from
inception to delivery. With Azure CDN dynamic site acceleration (DSA) optimization, the
performance of web pages with dynamic content is measurably improved.
Azure CDN from Akamai and Azure CDN from Verizon both offer DSA optimization through
the Optimized for menu during endpoint creation. Dynamic site acceleration from Microsoft is
offered via Azure Front Door Service.
Important
For Azure CDN from Akamai profiles, you are allowed to change the optimization of a CDN
endpoint after it has been created.
For Azure CDN from Verizon profiles, you cannot change the optimization of a CDN endpoint
after it has been created.

CDN endpoint configuration to accelerate delivery of dynamic

files
To configure a CDN endpoint to optimize delivery of dynamic files, you can either use the Azure
portal, the REST APIs, or any of the client SDKs to do the same thing programmatically.
To configure a CDN endpoint for DSA optimization by using the Azure portal:
1. In the CDN profile page, select Endpoint.

The Add an endpoint pane appears.

2. Under Optimized for, select Dynamic site acceleration.
3. For Probe path, enter a valid path to a file.
Probe path is a feature specific to DSA, and a valid path is required for creation. DSA uses a
small probe path file placed on the origin server to optimize network routing configurations
for the CDN. For the probe path file, you can download and upload the sample file to your
site, or use an existing asset on your origin that is about 10 KB in size.
4. Enter the other required endpoint options (for more information, see Create a new CDN
endpoint), then select Add.
After the CDN endpoint is created, it applies the DSA optimizations for all files that match
certain criteria.
To configure an existing endpoint for DSA (Azure CDN from Akamai profiles only):
1. In the CDN profile page, select the endpoint you want to modify.
2. From the left pane, select Optimization.
The Optimization page appears.
3. Under Optimized for, select Dynamic site acceleration, then select Save.
Note
DSA incurs extra charges. For more information, see Content Delivery Network pricing.

DSA Optimization using Azure CDN

Dynamic Site Acceleration on Azure CDN speeds up delivery of dynamic assets by using the
following techniques:
• Route optimization
• TCP optimizations
• Object prefetch (Azure CDN from Akamai only)
• Adaptive image compression (Azure CDN from Akamai only)

Route Optimization
Route optimization is important because the Internet is a dynamic place, where traffic and
temporarily outages are constantly changing the network topology. The Border Gateway Protocol
(BGP) is the routing protocol of the Internet, but there may be faster routes via intermediary Point
of Presence (PoP) servers.
Route optimization chooses the most optimal path to the origin so that a site is continuously
accessible and dynamic content is delivered to end users via the fastest and most reliable route
possible.
The Akamai network uses techniques to collect real-time data and compare various paths through
different nodes in the Akamai server, as well as the default BGP route across the open Internet to
determine the fastest route between the origin and the CDN edge. These techniques avoid Internet
congestion points and long routes.
Similarly, the Verizon network uses a combination of Anycast DNS, high capacity support PoPs,
and health checks, to determine the best gateways to best route data from the client to the origin.
As a result, fully dynamic and transactional content is delivered more quickly and more reliably to
end users, even when it is uncacheable.

TCP Optimizations
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the standard of the Internet protocol suite used to deliver
information between applications on an IP network. By default, several back-and-forth requests are
required to set up a TCP connection, as well as limits to avoid network congestions, which result in
inefficiencies at scale. Azure CDN from Akamai handles this problem by optimizing in three
areas:
 • Eliminating TCP slow start
• Leveraging persistent connections
• Tuning TCP packet parameters

Eliminating TCP slow start

TCP slow start is an algorithm of the TCP protocol that prevents network congestion by limiting the
amount of data sent over the network. It starts off with small congestion window sizes between
sender and receiver until the maximum is reached or packet loss is detected.
Both Azure CDN from Akamai and Azure CDN from Verizon profiles eliminate TCP slow start
with the following three steps:
1. Health and bandwidth monitoring is used to measure the bandwidth of connections between
edge PoP servers.
2. Metrics are shared between edge PoP servers so that each server is aware of the network
conditions and server health of the other PoPs around them. 
3. The CDN edge servers make assumptions about some transmission parameters, such as what
the optimal window size should be when communicating with other CDN edge servers in its
proximity. This step means that the initial congestion window size can be increased if the
health of the connection between the CDN edge servers is capable of higher packet data
transfers. 

Leveraging persistent connections

Using a CDN, fewer unique machines connect to your origin server directly compared with users
connecting directly to your origin. Azure CDN also pools user requests together to establish fewer
connections with the origin.
As previously mentioned, several handshake requests are required to establish a TCP connection.
Persistent connections, which are implemented by the Keep-Alive HTTP header, reuse existing
TCP connections for multiple HTTP requests to save round-trip times and speed up delivery.
Azure CDN from Verizon also sends periodic keep-alive packets over the TCP connection to
prevent an open connection from being closed.

Tuning TCP packet parameters

Azure CDN from Akamai tunes the parameters that govern server-to-server connections and
reduces the amount of long-haul round trips required to retrieve content embedded in the site by
using the following techniques:
• Increasing the initial congestion window so that more packets can be sent without waiting
for an acknowledgement.
• Decreasing the initial retransmit timeout so that a loss is detected, and retransmission occurs
more quickly.
• Decreasing the minimum and maximum retransmit timeout to reduce the wait time before
assuming packets were lost in transmission.
Object prefetch (Azure CDN from Akamai only)
Most websites consist of an HTML page, which references various other resources such as images
and scripts. Typically, when a client requests a webpage, the browser first downloads and parses the
HTML object, and then makes additional requests to linked assets that are required to fully load the
page.
Prefetch is a technique to retrieve images and scripts embedded in the HTML page while the HTML
is served to the browser, and before the browser even makes these object requests.
With the prefetch option turned on at the time when the CDN serves the HTML base page to the
client’s browser, the CDN parses the HTML file and make additional requests for any linked
resources and store it in its cache. When the client makes the requests for the linked assets, the CDN
edge server already has the requested objects and can serve them immediately without a round trip
to the origin. This optimization benefits both cacheable and non-cacheable content.

Adaptive image compression (Azure CDN from Akamai only)

Some devices, especially mobile ones, experience slower network speeds from time to time. In
these scenarios, it is more beneficial for the user to receive smaller images in their webpage more
quickly rather than waiting a long time for full resolution images.
This feature automatically monitors network quality, and employs standard JPEG compression
methods when network speeds are slower to improve delivery time.
Adaptive image compression (Azure CDN from Akamai only)
Adaptive Image Compression File Extensions
JPEG compression .jpg, .jpeg, .jpe, .jig, .jgig, .jgi

Caching
With DSA, caching is turned off by default on the CDN, even when the origin includes Cache-
Control or Expires headers in the response. DSA is typically used for dynamic assets that
should not be cached because they are unique to each client. Caching can break this behavior.
If you have a website with a mix of static and dynamic assets, it is best to take a hybrid approach to
get the best performance.
For Azure CDN Standard from Verizon and Azure CDN Standard from Akamai profiles, you
can turn on caching for specific DSA endpoints by using caching rules.
To access caching rules:
1. From the CDN profile page, under settings, select Caching rules. 
 The Caching rules page opens.
2. Create a global or custom caching rule to turn on caching for your DSA endpoint.
For Azure CDN Premium from Verizon profiles only, you turn on caching for specific DSA
endpoints by using the rules engine. Any rules that are created affect only those endpoints of your
profile that are optimized for DSA.
To access the rules engine:
1. From the CDN profile page, select Manage. 

The CDN management portal opens.

2. From the CDN management portal, select ADN, then select Rules Engine.
Alternatively, you can use two CDN endpoints: one endpoint optimized with DSA to deliver
dynamic assets and another endpoint optimized with a static optimization type, such as general web
delivery, to delivery cacheable assets. Modify your webpage URLs to link directly to the asset on
the CDN endpoint you plan to use.
For example, mydynamic.azureedge.net/index.html is a dynamic page and is loaded
from the DSA endpoint.  The HTML page references multiple static assets such as JavaScript
libraries or images that are loaded from the static CDN endpoint, such as
mystatic.azureedge.net/banner.jpg and
mystatic.azureedge.net/scripts.js.