Gartner defines “content delivery networks” as highly distributed edge-based cloud delivery platforms. These platforms provide functionality such as content acceleration, API caching, image optimization, streaming video delivery, web application and perimeter security, and edge compute and storage.
Gartner’s CloudHarmony website shows CDN latency data, specifically ICMP latency, across multiple regions and providers. For the purpose of this post, we have used data from December 2015 until January 2022 within the North America and Oceania regions. You can access this data for free.
The data comprises a collection of CDN latency records (fastest and slowest) for the aforementioned time period and regions. The table below lists all eighteen providers assessed:
| Akamai | CDN77 | IBM Cloud CDN – Akamai |
| Alibaba Cloud CDN | CDNsun | Incapsula |
| Amazon CloudFront | CloudFlare | KeyCDN |
| Azure CDN from Akamai | Fastly CDN | Limelight CDN |
| Azure CDN from Verizon | Google Cloud CDN | Verizon DELIVER large |
| CacheFly CDN | Highwinds CDN | Verizon DELIVER small |
In regards to general numbers, the lowest latency in the last 7 years was 10 milliseconds (ms) in North America and 8 ms in Oceania. For the same time period, the highest latency recorded was 42 ms in North America and 62 ms in Oceania.
The two charts below include the slowest and fastest latency records for each CDN provider. The representation of data in this format makes it easy to compare the latency of the two regions for every single provider.
Latency differences between regions vary from 1 to 20 ms across the 18 providers. KeyCDN and Azure CDN from Akamai, feature the smallest difference of 1 ms between their fastest latency records in both regions. CacheFly CDN recorded the biggest difference of 19 ms between their fastest latency records in both regions.
When doing the same comparison but using the slowest latency as the reference, Akamai, Azure CDN from Akamai, and Key CDN have the smallest difference of just 1 ms. Whilst the biggest difference of 20 ms is seen for Alibaba Cloud CDN and CacheFly CDN services.
For further details related to this latency analysis, visit:
https://cloudharmony.com/network-3m-in-america_north-and-oceania-from-ripe
We also have another great blog post about CDN performance that you can read here:
https://www.blog.cloudharmony.com/post/cdn-performance-matters
Other resources:
Market Guide for Global CDN (paywall)
Cloud Decisions and CloudHarmony – transparency for the cloud
