5 CDN Metrics You Should Care About

If you’ve ever trained for a race, then you know the importance of tracking your metrics. Metrics allow you to measure progress and help you understand your weaknesses. Similarly, CDN metrics can help you prove the value of your technology and signal when it’s time to upgrade.

How can you use CDN metrics to grasp the real ROI of your technology investments? Interpreting CDN performance metrics is a two-step process. First, you must identify and track the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are important to your organization. Then you need to compare these metrics with KPIs from other departments, like business analytics.

The challenge is that CDNs are used to transmit all types of content, ranging from simple web pages to HD video. While every business will have KPIs that matter more to them, we’re going to look at some general KPIs that everyone with a CDN should be tracking.

KPIs That Directly Impact Business Performance

Whether you’re an over-the-top (OTT) media provider or you provide business analytics software, your customers don’t appreciate sluggish or interrupted service. Tracking key metrics can help you find room for improvement and discover which hardware needs an upgrade. Here are five CDN performance benchmarks you should be monitoring:

1. Edge processing time. Traditionally, servers from a single location or a few sporadic locations would do the work on the back end and then send the results back to the user. Edge processing changed this by doing computations like bandwidth reduction, transcoding, and content manipulation on the edge servers closest to the user, reducing the distance your content has to travel. The time it takes to perform these actions is called edge processing time.
   
   
2. Load times. As one of the more noticeable metrics to the user they measure the actual time it takes to download images, Js, CSS and other objects. Load times have a direct impact on user experience and customer satisfaction. It’s possible to track this metric in many different ways, such as device type, servers used, and geography.
   
   
3. Render time. Like load times, render times are among the more noticeable metrics to the end user. While related to load times, render time measures the time it takes to process the content and display it to the user.
   
   
4. Error frequency. Errors are found at every stage in the content delivery process and are tracked within metrics like load times. Error severity can also range greatly, from urgent errors that directly impact UX or security to things you’ll want to fix in the future.
   
   
5. Hardware performance. Tracking metrics like throughput, memory consumption, and CPU usage will give you an idea of how your servers are being used. With this information, it’s possible to make predictions regarding when you may need to upgrade your hardware and if you’re over-equipping your servers.
   

These five CDN performance metrics are only a few of the KPIs you can track. To find the most important metrics for your business, it’s crucial that you look at the relationship between CDN metrics, business performance, and customer satisfaction. The intersection of these three data points will likely highlight your organization’s priorities, such as CDN edge computing.

Well-known management author and consultant Peter Drucker wrote, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” This is true in almost every aspect of business, including CDN hardware. When you can connect CDN performance improvements to real business performance, you’ll make your customers happy and impress leadership.

Whether you’re a large organization or a smaller firm, we can help you build a CDN server that improves metrics across the spectrum. Chat with an infrastructure expert today.

About Intequus

Intequus is the only turnkey edge infrastructure provider with 30 years of custom hardware engineering experience. Our global logistics, continuous program management, and unparalleled lifecycle support simplify scaled hardware initiatives and ensure fast, reliable service for your users. By handling every stage of your edge hardware needs, Intequus ensures that you can stay focused on your business and your customers.