In our past work, we have encountered customers looking to build a private secure CDN, similar to Cloudflare, but with greater privacy, control, and customization capabilities.

Why Build Your Own CDN?

Real-World Case: Privacy Risks with Shared CDNs

A large tech enterprise once relied on a public CDN service for global content distribution. However, during a data breach, they discovered that their traffic logs had been analyzed by third parties, exposing their internal API access patterns. This not only compromised business privacy but also posed potential security risks. Ultimately, the enterprise decided to build its own CDN to ensure data security and control while optimizing local access performance.

Key Drawbacks of Public CDNs

Centralized shared CDNs (such as Cloudflare, Akamai, and Fastly) offer significant convenience and cost efficiency, but they come with privacy, security, and control trade-offs, including:

• Data Security and Privacy:
  • Traffic may be decrypted on external infrastructure.
  • Logs and security data are shared globally, increasing the risk of data breaches.
• IP Pollution:
  • Shared IPs may be affected by malicious activities of other tenants, damaging the company's reputation.
• Performance and Availability:
  • Local traffic is forced to route to the cloud PoP, resulting in additional latency.
  • Relying on a single cloud provider poses a risk of global outages.
  • There is an inability to provide detailed internal observability and root cause analysis capabilities.

In contrast, customized edge networks provide on-demand, adjustable coverage that flexibly meets specific business needs.

Comparing Existing Self-Hosted CDN Solutions

Several successful self-hosted CDN solutions exist in the market, such as:

• Pinterest: Built a high-performance CDN using Nginx and a custom caching architecture.
• Netflix: Optimized content distribution through Open Connect.
• GitHub: Relies on Edge Proxy for secure traffic management.

However, these solutions are often tailored to specific enterprise needs and are not easily adaptable for different organizations. Thus, the market still lacks a sophisticated and truly self-hosted secure CDN solution that integrates modern cloud-native technologies while addressing security, performance, and maintainability concerns for enterprises of all sizes.

How to Build a Modern Secure CDN?

To create a production-grade secure CDN, the following key components are required:Core Technology Stack

1. High-Performance Reverse Proxy (Nginx, OpenResty, Envoy)
2. Distributed Configuration Management to ensure real-time synchronization across global edge nodes.
3. Flexible Caching System that supports large files, small files, and dynamic content.
4. Global Traffic Steering via Anycast or purpose-built CDN DNS resolution.
5. Monitoring & Observability for logging, edge node quality tracking, and real-time analytics.
6. Distributed High-Speed Network to reduce origin load and improve user experience.
7. DDoS Protection & Security Features to maintain business continuity.
8. API & Automation Management to enhance DevOps friendliness.
9. Simple & Efficient Architecture Design using modern cloud computing practices to minimize operational complexity.

Independently developing these components is a significant challenge for most teams, whereas companies like Cloudflare have spent 10-20 years building these capabilities.

Why Now is the Best Time to Build Your Own CDN?

• Mature Cloud Infrastructure: Enterprises can leverage cloud + traditional IDC + home networks to build a global edge network.
• Modern Software Architectures: Technologies like Kubernetes, Serverless, and microservices make self-hosted CDNs easier to manage.
• Advancements in Network Protocols: QUIC/HTTP3 and other innovations have made high-performance distributed systems more achievable.

Thus, now is the best time to build a secure self-hosted CDN, as enterprises can take advantage of cutting-edge technologies and mature tools to create a more secure and efficient edge infrastructure. And we happen to have accumulated deep knowledge in the aforementioned fields. Keep it simple for you, and leave the complexity to us!

Our Solution

We are developing a self-hosted secure CDN platform with the following key features:

• Comprehensive Edge Security: Integrates WAF, DDoS protection, bot detection, and API security.
• High-Performance CDN: Intelligent caching, DNS & DoH routing.
• Multi-Cloud & Hybrid Deployment: Deployable across AWS, GCP, Azure, and on-premises data centers.
• API & DevOps-Friendly: Automated management with API-first design.
• Zero Trust Security: Enforces security based on machine identity.
• AI & API Gateway: Supports modern AI applications with API protection capabilities.
• Enterprise-Grade Observability: Full-stack log analytics and real-time performance monitoring.

Join Us in Building the Next-Gen Secure CDN

Benefits of Joining Our Early Access Program

1. Exclusive Early Access: Be among the first to experience our cutting-edge platform.
2. Influence Product Development: Your feedback will directly shape product design and optimization.
3. Tailored Onboarding Support: Receive personalized guidance from our expert team.
4. Long-Term Technical Support: Participants will continue to benefit from ongoing product improvements.

If you are interested in a self-hosted secure CDN solution, we invite you to connect with us and explore a more secure and efficient edge infrastructure!