Users expect fast, reliable, and personalized web experiences independent of their browser, location, device, or network. However, the very innovations, such as rich interactive content and applications, that make these experiences so engaging also slow page downloads and put the quality of the consumer experience at risk. Standard CDN capability includes the ability to cache files closer to the end users to speed up delivery of static files. However, this does not help to improve the loading speed of dynamic web applications and APIs, which return unique data to each user along with request that cannot be cached. With Azure CDN Dynamic Site Acceleration (DSA), the performance of web pages with dynamic content is significantly improved.
DSA includes a variety of techniques that benefit the latency and performance of dynamic content.
Route / network optimizations: The fastest and most reliable path to your origin to retrieve and deliver dynamic content is constantly evaluated. Content is delivered using optimized network protocols and by using the optimal network delivery path to ensure Internet congestion points and unnecessarily long routes are avoided.
TCP optimization: Internet communications over TCP are not optimized for performance. With DSA, a number of TCP optimizations are applied to improve the performance of the delivery, such as keeping connections open longer and reusing them for additional requests. These optimizations accelerate connection setup, increase the packet transmission rate, and reduce packet loss.
Resource prefetching (Akamai only): Based on user behavior and access patterns, the CDN learns which assets are required by the application and preemptively fetches content from origin and brings it closer to the user so it can be delivered faster.
Adaptive Image Compression (Akamai only): Continuously monitor internet conditions to identify slower network connections, to automaticaly compress and resize JPEG images to deliver the most optimal image based on connection speed.
To learn how to use this feature and for more details, please visit the documentation page.
DSA is available today as an optimization on top of Azure CDN from Akamai as well as Verizon standard and premium profiles. Note that there are additional fees associated with the DSA optimization type, unlike the media and large file optimization types which are available without additional
