March ends like a lion for edge-related news from CDN vendors
Three product announcements from content delivery network vendors CenturyLink, StackPath, and Limelight Networks that touch on edge services popped up as March drew to a close.
In one, web application security firm Signal Sciences and network services provider CenturyLink said they are integrating some products and features to increase performance and security levels for customers’ web applications. Signal Sciences’ web application firewall (WAF) will be delivered via CenturyLink’s CDN Edge Compute product, while customers can also protect network resources with CenturyLink’s DDoS mitigation service.
The companies claim the combination provides an end-to-end method of creating high-performing, scalable and secure applications.
CenturyLink’s CDN Edge Compute, which is powered by technology from Section.io, sports a modular, flexible architecture on which developers can design, configure and deploy custom edge web apps, according to the firms. CenturyLink says the architecture enables firewall, bot management, and application performance modules to “run within milliseconds” of customer infrastructure.
Signal Sciences’ WAF, meanwhile, provides buyers with “instant visibility and protection for their most critical Web applications in a matter of minutes.” Company executives claim their firewall protects against OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities including SQLi and XSS, account takeovers, API security holes, account takeovers, and malicious bots.
A second product collaboration was announced between StackPath, which sells CDN and secure edge computing services, and Broadcom, a semiconductor design and software maker.
StackPath’s edge computing software now is being delivered via Broadcom’s Stingray SmartNIC, which are network interface controllers. The integration is aimed at cloud-centric content delivery services at the edge, including security, app-performance optimization, and streaming video.
StackPath executives say their edge services compare favorably to cloud computing services offered by public core cloud vendors; taking advantage of chip layer functions is a way of enhancing overall service performance to provide a leg up against the big cloud providers.
For their part, Broadcom executives say their Stingray SmartNIC is a natural for deploying secure services, given its small footprint, advanced security co-processers and other features that enhance performance by offloading some functions from general-purpose CPUs.
In a third March announcement, Limelight Networks said its serverless edge computing platform, EdgeFunctions, is in field trials. Company executives said it is expected to be on sale in the second quarter of this year.
EdgeFunctions is designed for content delivery, including streaming video. It automatically makes code available to edge locations globally and can be scaled as demands change. The platform can perform dynamic ad insertion, A/B testing, image manipulation, access control, and other functions.
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Article Topics
CenturyLink | DDoS | edge PaaS | edge security | Limelight Networks | Section.io | Signal Sciences | StackPath | WAF
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