What are the differences between CDN, SCDN, and DCDN for website acceleration? How to choose?

1. CDN

It is the most commonly used acceleration function on the website. Through the distributed server layout, the website business content is cached in cloud servers in various locations for visitors to access nearby. Therefore, websites that use CDN can open very quickly.

The limitation is that ordinary CDN acceleration only accelerates static content, such as pictures, documents, etc.

2. SCDN

SCDN (Secure Content Delivery Network) is a CDN service with security protection capabilities. While providing stable acceleration, it can also intelligently predict attack behaviors and switch DDoS attack requests to high-defense IPs for cleaning through an intelligent scheduling system. Requests from real users can obtain resources normally from acceleration nodes. The distributed architecture of the acceleration nodes also has the ability to defend against CC attacks, truly achieving a balance between acceleration and security.

Traditional CDN acceleration services cannot resist large-scale DDoS and CC attacks. Using high-defense IP alone to protect the source station cannot also take into account acceleration. However, business scenarios such as gaming, finance, government and enterprise security, e-commerce, and medical fields that are vulnerable to attacks but must also take acceleration into account require secure CDN services that have both high defense capabilities and stable and efficient full-link acceleration. Alibaba Cloud SCDN is based on the high-quality edge acceleration resources of Alibaba Cloud CDN and deeply integrates the professional attack and defense strategies of Alibaba Cloud Shield, providing a one-stop overall solution for security and acceleration. You can quickly access Alibaba Cloud SCDN by using the Quick Start Guide.

Architecture diagram

Intelligently predict attack behaviors and automatically switch malicious requests to high-defense IP addresses without manual operation, achieving data cleansing and protecting the source station. Requests from real users normally obtain resources from the acceleration nodes. Achieve intelligent acceleration and security balance:

Function

Anti-DDoS, anti-CC, anti-scam
DDoS cleaning: Massive DDoS cleaning capabilities, which can perfectly defend against SYN Flood, ACK Flood, ICMP Flood, UDP Flood, NTP Flood, SSDP Flood, DNS Flood, and HTTP Flood
Anti-CC attack: The distributed architecture of the acceleration node has a natural anti-CC capability. Anti-brushing: CDN users are often maliciously swiped for traffic, resulting in economic losses. SCDN nodes achieve the purpose of anti-spam by intelligently identifying abnormal and frequent access to unfamiliar IPs and restricting their access. Intelligent scheduling: Based on the computing power of Alibaba Cloud Fei Tian platform and deep learning algorithms, it can intelligently predict DDoS attacks and smoothly switch high-defense IPs without affecting online business. Independent nodes: SCDN nodes are physically isolated from ordinary CDN nodes and are completely independently built. Security acceleration nodes with deep integrated security functions can provide a single node with 100G high-defense capabilities while providing stable and efficient edge acceleration. Exclusive IP: Each user accessing SCDN has an exclusive IP in each SCDN node to achieve security risk isolation. Independent SDNS scheduling: A single user enjoys an independent SDNS scheduling domain, and DNS attacks between users do not affect each other. It has a DNS Flood protection of millions of QPS. Stable acceleration of global nodes: Alibaba Cloud SCDN relies on Alibaba Cloud CDN, with more than 2,000 nodes in China, a single node bandwidth of 40Gbps+, and a total network bandwidth output capacity of more than 120Tbps.
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Full-link security: Provides full-link HTTPS security acceleration solutions and supports certificate upload and management
HTTP2: Full support for HTTP/2
Monitoring and logs Multi-dimensional monitoring: provides panoramic information monitoring, including access traffic statistics, access analysis, hit rate, ISP, DDoS and CC attack information, pv/uv, QPS, top access information monitoring, etc. Log download: supports access to full log downloads Self-service management console: provides a smooth self-service console experience, which can complete the access to acceleration services and various function configurations by itself.
API: Provides a standard API interface to configure various functions more efficiently and flexibly.

What is the difference between CDN and SCDN?

What is the difference between Alibaba Cloud CDN and SCDN? The difference lies in the S. SCDN is a CDN with cloud shield protection function. SCDN is more secure and has more advantages.

SCDN function Cloud Shield security protection is injected into edge nodes to take into account acceleration. At the same time, users have exclusive IPs to effectively isolate risks, provide DNS protection, massive DDoS cleaning, anti-CC attack protection capabilities, and all-round 7*24 automated and precise security protection

Exclusive IP: Each user and each node enjoys an independent IP, risks are isolated from each other, and business is more secure
DNS protection: SDNS independently schedules domains, DNS attacks between users do not affect each other, million QPS DNS Flood protection Massive DDoS cleaning capabilities: Massive DDoS cleaning capabilities, can perfectly defend against SYN Flood, ACK Flood, ICMP Flood, UDP Flood, NTP Flood, SSDP Flood, DNS Flood, HTTP Flood, CC attacks
CC attack protection: Provides deep learning defense strategies, compatible with rule-based defense strategies, supports custom rules, supports multiple business types, supports multiple content acceleration scenarios such as small images, dynamic and static website resources, and large file downloads. Through object heat algorithms, layered cache hot resources, your resource content can be delivered quickly, stably, efficiently, and completely around the world.

Intelligent scheduling: fast and automatic scheduling capabilities for daily acceleration/massive attack scenarios, and cleaning of attack traffic at edge nodes. High-performance cache: balanced use of CPU multi-core processing capabilities, efficient and reasonable use and control of memory, and maximization of SSD IOPS and throughput. Ultra-high read and write capabilities: each node has high-speed read and write solid-state drive SSD storage, combined with SSD acceleration capabilities, greatly reducing user access waiting time and improving availability. Flexible custom cache expiration time: custom cache expiration time rules for specified resource content, support for specified paths/test/... or file name suffixes such as *.html. Full-link secure data transmission. Provide enterprise-level reliable HTTPS acceleration services, support custom anti-theft functions, ensure stable online business, and effectively prevent business risks caused by hijacking, tampering, and data leakage.

Enterprise-level reliable HTTPS acceleration: Client access, node interconnection, and back-to-source requests all support HTTPS encryption technology. You only need to enable the secure acceleration mode and upload the acceleration domain name certificate/private key. You can view, disable, enable, and edit the certificate.
Refer hotlink protection: Identify and filter visitor identities by configuring referer blacklists and whitelists to limit resource access. Authentication configuration: Advanced hotlink protection function, set authentication key to encrypt URLs and protect user source site resources.
IP blacklist: IPs that are in the blacklist cannot access the current acceleration domain name.

3. DCDN

DCDN is a cloud product with upgraded technology based on CDN acceleration. Intelligently distinguish whether the content being accessed is dynamic or static. If it is static content, Alibaba Cloud CDN can be used to accelerate it directly. For dynamic content, routing decision optimization, protocol optimization, etc. can be used to quickly return to the source to pull content data.

Compared with ordinary CDN acceleration that only accelerates static content, such as images and documents, Alibaba Cloud Full-Site Acceleration (DCDN) can intelligently accelerate both dynamic and static content. Please see the table for feature comparison.

Based on the above, among the four cloud products of Alibaba Cloud SLB, CDN, SCDN and DCDN, CDN acceleration is a must for websites, and the other three products are selected on demand. SLB is suitable for medium and large businesses, and is configured with multiple ECS cloud servers and cloud databases for use together; DCDN is a full-site acceleration that can intelligently accelerate dynamic and static content; SCDN is based on CDN acceleration and can defend against large-scale malicious DDoS and CC attacks. The above are the differences between these four products and how to choose, please be aware of them.