Makani Networks Launches Next-Generation Global Content Distribution Network

Online, September 17, 2012 (Newswire.com) - Makani Networks today announced the launch of MakCDN - one of the world's smartest, multimedia- and mobile- optimized, next-generation global content distribution network (CDN).

Using MakCDN, users can architect next-generation highly-available highly-redundant global-scale services today. MakCDN deploys smart CDN edge servers at some of the most strategic locations around the globe. The MakCDN IPv6-and-SSL enabled global CDN server infrastructure spans three continents today with the potential to scale the CDN server infrastructure to virtually anywhere - any continent - any country - any region - that is, scale the CDN to virtually unlimited points of presence around the globe.

MakCDN derives its "intelligence" from MakDNS - an IPv6-enabled highly-scalable highly-redundant authoritative global DNS infrastructure enabling state-of-the-art DNS features including geographical load balancing, geo-directional Internet Protocol traffic control and transparent traffic mobility, industry's fastest name-based auto-failover and auto-recovery, industry's first name-based 'stealth' hotstandby services, location-aware Georecords, IP-based remote service monitoring and email/SMS alert and notification services, plus an IPv6-enabled and DNSSEC compliant Distributed DNS infrastructure. All of these technically advanced next-generation features are already available and
built into MakCDN.

Makani Networks' global server infrastructure is designed based on the fundamental design principle to decouple the underlying infrastructure (server) vendors from on-the-top cloud services providers. Such decoupling of on-the-top services from the underlying infrastructure vendors enables Makani Networks to leverage the highest quality hardware at the lowest overall operational cost and at the lowest total cost of ownership without compromising on service quality. This translates into significant cost savings that are then continually passed on to end-users.

MakCDN implements a unique architecture whereby tens or or even hundreds of thousands of CDN servers can be deployed in a short span of time. These servers can be remotely monitored and managed with relative ease through a centralized web-based administration panel. The existing infrastructure consists of high performance well-provisioned servers hosted in either Tier-I or Tier-II data-centers offering highly-redundant multi-gigabit network connectivity. The strategic locations of these servers dramatically help improve the end-user experience by optimizing on wide-area bandwidth and by reducing latency. The infrastructure is designed to be able to scale to hundreds of terabits per second of aggregate bandwidth capacity and unprecedented levels of compute capacity necessary for next-generation compute-intensive and data-intensive wide-area services.

MakCDN enables periodic and automatic renewal of servers from a large numbers of available edge servers. This obfuscates the server IP address and the location of the IP address and therefore makes it very difficult for an adversary to launch a full-blown DDoS attack on domains hosted with MakCDN. The MakCDN infrastructure also enables hardware-assisted SSL (Secure Socket Layer) acceleration and many of these edge servers also support IPv6 through a mix of tunneled-brokered and native-IPv6 connectivity.

Each MakCDN edge server is continuously remotely monitored by global monitor nodes within MakDNS. For each remotely monitored CDN edge server, E-mail/SMS alert notification is also enabled to quickly notify of any service failure or recovery. In addition to standard services that are remotely monitored such as HTTP and HTTPS, non-standard services and custom TCP ports and UDP ports also monitored in MakCDN to derive detailed network-wide intelligence for MakCDN. The intelligence available from multiple protocol layers from its CDN edge servers is then used to make highly informed decisions on the state of its own content network.