A content delivery network (CDN) is a network of multiple proxy servers with their data centers distributed globally. It aims at providing high-speed service and content delivery to the end-users with high performance and availability. Whether you deal with video gaming, live broadcasting, video streaming, media, advertising, or any other content-related fields, using a powerful CDN will help accelerate your content delivery and improve user experience. But finding such a CDN service with excellent features at an affordable price can be challenging. When you search for the best CDN providers, you will find plenty of them, such as Azure, Cloudflare, AWS, etc. But it might not fit your budget, especially if you are a small or growing business. And if you go with a cheaper CDN alternative, you might have to compromise on the performance. Thankfully, you have G-Core Labs CDN available that checks both the boxes – it’s feature-rich and performing and comes with an affordable price tag. So, if you are looking for a good CDN provider, G-Core Labs CDN can be a good choice. In this article, I’ll review this CDN to help you decide whether it is worth investing in or not. Let’s start!
G-Core Labs CDN: What Is It?
G-Core Labs CDN is a superfast content delivery network (CDN) to distribute any content globally no matter where your audience is. Their CDN is able to deliver both static and dynamic content, that provides your service with additional security and privacy. This powerful CDN solution is by G-Core Labs – one of the leading providers of cloud and edge services across the globe. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Luxemburg, this platform has 140+ points of presence worldwide, 110+ total network capacity, 30 ms average response time, and 11k+ peering partners from across the globe. (Read more about the provider in our G-Core Labs Cloud review) G-Core Labs CDN uses Anycast routing and GeoDNS balancing to offer powerful performance at an affordable rate. It is also easy to set up, and you get a responsive and knowledgeable customer support team to clear your issues on time. All these aspects make G-Core Labs CDN a leader in this space for businesses of all sizes. It is best for entertainment companies like video streaming networks, gaming, etc., but it also works great for other online service providers. Let’s start reviewing G-Core Labs CDN based on several factors – features, performance, ease of use, use cases, support, and pricing.
G-Core Labs CDN: Features
G-Core Labs CDN has a variety of useful features to provide fast and stable content delivery to delight customers. Here are some of its remarkable features:
Supports Necessary Protocols
G-Core Labs CDN supports all the necessary protocols such as HTTP/2, TLS 1.3, IPv6, HESP, and HLS.
HTTP/2: This protocol is enabled by default when you start using the G-Core Labs CDN. It works only in your browsers for handling HTTPS requests.TLS 1.3: You also have the option of TLS 1.3 with 0-RTT, which provides a more secure and faster connection.IPv6: It supports the modern internet protocol – IPv6.HESP: The CDN supports an adaptive HTTP-based streaming protocol to offer lower latency ranging from 0.4 seconds to 2 seconds.
HLS: HTTP Live Streaming Protocol (HLSP) helps deliver live broadcasts in high quality.
Flexible CDN Settings
You will get plenty of options for CDN settings. They’re:
Instant purge: You can perform selective or complete cache clearing for any number of files.Rules: If you want to manage files that follow a particular path or type, you can review the rules and do it accordingly.Prefetch: You can pre-load heavy documents and files greater than 200 MB at a faster speed.Cache settings: Create and manage your cache delivery, expiration time, parameters, cookies, etc.Origin shielding: Assign a CDN server to handle heavy loads and requests during a cache miss. This helps reduce loads on the origin server.Origin groups: You can combine origin servers into a group to distribute load and increase resiliency.CDN compression: This feature lets you quickly compress your media and text files using Gzip and Brotli algorithms. You can also optimize the image’s size using WebP.Video content delivery: You will get special settings to deliver live videos and broadcast on demand.Request path changes: You can use the option – Rewrites to direct your request paths.Domain setup: Set up any domain you want for delivering your content to your audience.Raw logs: Get in-depth data about your network’s performance, request types and time, geography, and other helpful information collected in the logs. It will help you detect errors and analyze customer behavior to improve your strategy. Speed limits: You can set dynamic and static speed limits. After downloading a data volume, you can set a specific limit and get a notification when reaching the limit. This will help regulate resource consumption.Header management: Add an HTTP response header and hide it.API: Get your hands on comprehensive documentation to integrate APIs with G-Core Labs CDN.
Security Features
With the increasing cyberattacks on systems, applications, and networks, there is a need for individuals and businesses to safeguard their digital assets. With G-Core Labs CDN, you will get several security features to enhance your security posture and prevent the likelihood of attacks.
DDoS protection: G-Core Labs CDN offers DDoS protection at the transport layer (L4) and network layer (L3) and application layer (L7) by default.HTTPS forced direct: It will redirect all the HTTPS requests you get to HTTPS to enable a secure connection.Flexible access policies: It offers flexible and strong access policies by IP address, country, and client application. It ensures that only authorized people can access your resources.SNI support: You can use TLS to set up a secure network connection.CORS headers: Add the Access-Control-Allow-Origin-Header to only permitted domains. It will prevent third-party websites or apps from downloading your content in order to safeguard it.Secure Token: Protect your content with a security key or token that will allow only the key holders to access your content or download it.Free SSL certificates: G-Core Labs CDN provides you with free SSL certificates by Let’s Encrypt. You can get it with a few clicks and add HTTPS to your website’s URL for better security. You also have the option to use a common certificate, or if you already own one from another provider, you can connect and use it easily.Origin validation: Their CDN servers can validate SSL certificates and their ownership while accessing the origin. This offers protection from man-in-the-middle attacks.Basic WAF: You will get basic web protection to protect the web resources of your clients from common attacks listed under the latest OWASP Top 10 security threats.NG-WAF: You have an opportunity to protect your application with a next-generation web application firewall. Besides OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities it helps you to prevent API threats and deploy real-time monitoring for the most advanced hacking activities.
Control Panel
G-Core Labs CDN’s control panel is excellent in terms of looks and use. Its interface has a modern design and is intuitive and convenient to use. You can see all the services are stacked on the left side to enable easy navigation. It is easy for both beginners and experienced users to use. Advanced users can also use an API to configure and update CDN settings. You can switch off or on your CDN with a simple click, clear cache instantly, and remove features you no longer need. Features included in the control panel are:
Live chat: You can connect to their support team quickly via live chat and get the answers to your questions. There’s also a knowledge base that you can refer to for common questions.Adding users: Empower your team members to access the control panel and add more members.Detailed statistics: Get detailed real-time statistics by analyzing data by your traffic volume, cache hit ratio, response codes, number of requests, etc., for the past three months. You also get comprehensive reporting to know about content delivery. This will help you measure your content performance and make strategies to improve.Two-factor authentication: Two-factor authentication is enabled to provide enhanced protection of your account from threats.
Data Center Locations
G-Core offers one of the best network coverage worldwide. Its data centers are located on six continents. All are equipped with the latest hardware and software and have top-notch security features both in the facilities and systems inside them. They have a massive 140+ points of presence.
North America: They currently have data centers in Seattle, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, Manassas, Ashburn, New York, Chicago, McAllen, Minneapolis, Toronto, Santiago de Queretaro, and Guatemala city. The planned locations are Phoenix, Boston, and Panama.South America: Bogota, Guayaquil, Lima, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Fortaleza, Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro, while the planned location is Porto Alegre.Europe: Madrid, Paris, London, Riga, Stockholm, Milan, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Prague, Lviv, Kyiv, Bucharest, Budapest, Warsaw, and more, with many proposed sites such as Oslo, Zurich, Rome, etc.Africa: Johannesburg, Luanda, and Lagos, while the planned cities are Cairo, Nairobi, Cape Town, etc.Asia: Mumbai, Kathmandu, Dhaka, Almaty, Tashkent, Bishkek, Dushanbe, Seoul, Tokyo, Osaka, Manila, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Hanoi, Singapore, Musket, Dubai, Doha, Damascus, Kuwait, and more. The proposed cities are Hyderabad, Chennai, New Delhi, Karachi, Riyadh, etc.Australia: Sydney and Melbourne, while planned cities are Perth and Auckland.
Integration
You have the option to integrate many services and tools with G-Core Labs CDN to extend its functionality and ease your life. You can add and connect it with plugins for CMS, Terraform, Grafana, external SSL certificates, and more.
G-Core Labs CDN Review: Performance
When you compare CDNs based on their performance, you must take into account several factors:
SpeedNumber of visitorsVisitor locationsFile size and typeHow often do you update themWeb apps you use.
If you change any of these factors, results may vary. Hence, to compare CDNs, the best way is to compare their average response times. This is a valuable metric that can roughly tell you how fast a CDN service is. Let’s see how this works out and also look at other factors to understand this CDN’s performance as a whole.
Response Time
The average response time of G-Core Labs CDN is one of the best – 30 ms across the globe. It is the measure of how much time, on average, a server takes to return the requested data to the user making that request. G-Core Labs CDN’s speed can be even faster in some locations like Europe. This CDN beats many other competitors in this regard, making it one of the most widely used CDN services in the world. In fact, G-Core Labs CDN is just behind CDN services by big companies like AWS, Akamai, and Fastly and ahead of many CDN services like Azure and Cloudflare. Furthermore, its performance in different continents varies. In Europe and South America, its response times are incredibly faster, while in Oceania, North America, and Africa, it has moderate response times.
Latest Technologies
The CDN uses its servers’ latest hardware and software configurations, powerful enough to withstand heavy loads during peak times. They use high-performing CPUs like third-generation Intel Xeon (Ice Lake) scalable processors. It allows the CDN to offer consistent performance and delight the users with uninterrupted services.
Load Balancing
G-Core Labs CDN utilizes load balancing to help distribute your incoming traffic in several edge servers. This makes content available for users all the time, even when the server becomes offline or temporarily unavailable. G-Core Labs CDN deploys these servers in various locations around the globe. It also allows the customers to choose the nearest available data centers to their target audience in order to serve their sites and app content faster. In addition, G-Core Labs enables automatic load calculation on all its CDN servers to offer faster delivery speeds and the highest content availability for end-users worldwide.
Uptime
You will get higher uptime as the company strives to maintain a stable uptime of 100%. Its security features and load balancing help ensure that nothing can reduce its performance. Load balancing distributes traffic between different points of presence, ensuring each server performs well with no crashes or downtimes. When high uptime combines with G-Core Labs’s wide network coverage, it balances the server load, resulting in faster speed, even during peak times.
Instant Cache Purging
G-Core Labs lets you clear cache instantly with a few clicks. Using this feature, you can provide the latest content version immediately to your users. It’s helpful when you face sudden traffic spikes or want to update your app or website content. Furthermore, server-side caching ensures that your most visited pages and content are always available from G-Core Labs CDN’s cache servers. This results in faster content delivery. You can also use server-side caching for file extensions, query strings, cookies, URL addresses, and more. So, G-Core Labs CDN can provide a decent performance as many enterprise CDNs but at an affordable price.
G-Core Labs CDN Review: Ease of Use
With intuitive control and impressive features, G-Core CDN is easy to use for both beginners and advanced users. You can set it up quickly within 15 minutes.
Create your account for freeConfigure your CDN resourceIntegrate your website or app with G-Core Labs CDN
And you are done! You can also integrate other services like plugins, CMS tools, visualization solutions, etc., with this CDN and enjoy working with it more. In addition, you don’t require to change links manually to the cached content while setting up the CDN for your site or app. Everything is automatic so that you can relax. Whether it’s modifying any setting or checking your performance, everything is easy with this CDN’s excellent features.
G-Core Labs CDN Review: Use Cases
Here are some of the common use cases where you can leverage G-Core Labs CDN: Gaming: G-Core Labs CDN will help you deliver heavy video games worldwide. The powerful technologies can significantly reduce your servers’ burdens during peak loads. Steaming and videos: Use the CDN to deliver your videos in 4K without delays and buffering, no matter where your users are located. It helps during:
Online broadcasts to an overwhelming number of viewers without extra costDelivering videos in Full HD, 3D, 4K, and 360 degrees to any device.Re-broadcasting content to social media platformsOffering real-time analytics and traffic dataSecuring your content from attackers and unauthorized users.
Servers: Get the CDN for your servers in order to lower your infrastructural costs and keep resources available all the time, even during sudden traffic surges. In addition, it will also help you enable delivery management via Terraform and API. Websites: G-Core Labs CDN will empower your website or application and help it rank higher in the search engines. It will also secure transactional data using SSL certificates and HTTP/2. In addition, the fast content delivery will increase your customer loyalty and boost the time they spend on your site. WordPress: You can automatically replace your current static links with G-Core Labs CDN links. It won’t require you to change your web resources’ code. Media: Use the CDN to deliver news faster to your audiences and keep your content available all the time. Pictures and files: You can use the CDN with WebP and Brotli to load product cards and images faster. The CDN will also help you accelerate your store’s loading speed in any country and handle load deficiently during sales. Advertising: Using this CDN will increase your campaign’s efficiency and reduce delays while loading your advertisements. Hence, you can deploy your ads quickly and be in the minds of your customers all the time.
G-Core Labs CDN Review: Support
G-Core Labs CDN offers 24/7 availability for customer support via a ticket, email, and live chat. Their chat service is unlike others with annoying bots; it’s actually cool and provides accurate and helpful answers. It will take just a few minutes to get back to you with the answer. Similarly, their ticket and email services are also good. The representatives are knowledgeable and supportive to help you every step of the way. Whether you need help with setup or other service-related support, you can rely on them. And if you want answers to some common questions, you can read their comprehensive knowledge base.
G-Core Labs CDN Review: Pricing
G-Core Labs CDN offers competitive pricing for customers located worldwide. All the plans you choose include a 14-days FREE trial period or 300GB of traffic. Once your trial period is over, your chosen plan will get activated. Here are some of the plans they offer:
FREE: This plan is free and can be used for personal blogs and sites. You will get 140 PoPs, 1 TB traffic, basic WAF, L3, and L4 protection.START: This costs $40 per month for 1.5 TB traffic, 140+ PoPs, and other features.
Other plans are also available at higher costs.
Conclusion: Should You Consider Buying It?
G-Core CDN is undoubtedly an exceptional CDN service with impressive features, performance, built-in security, and support. It also comes with a user-friendly control panel and is easy to use for beginners and advanced users alike. The best thing about G-Core Labs CDN is that you get all of these fantastic offerings at an affordable price, significantly lower than many service providers. Hence, investing in this CDN can be wise. However, it’s difficult to define how well this CDN can perform for you since it depends on several factors like setup, access to advanced features, location, number of visitors, etc. So, I’d recommend you to go with their free trial and experience the CDN yourself. If you like it, you can start with their FREE or paid plan.
