A Pull Zone, is a zone which proxies content from an Origin Server to the CDN edge servers. It provides access globally to files from the Edges. A Pull Zone is the least intrusive to setup, and is ideal for most users speeding up a website.
What is a Pull Zone?
A Pull Zone, is a zone which proxies content from an Origin Server to the CDN edge servers. It provides fast access globally to files from the Edges. A Pull Zone is the least intrusive to setup, and is ideal for most users speeding up a website.
When do I want to use a Pull Zone?
This zone is used to serve small, frequently accessed static files such as images, css, javascript. Pull Zones are not used for any file over 10MB or non-streaming video.
When do I not want to use a Pull Zone?
Any time your files are over 10MB, or you require streaming video.
Can I use a Pull Zone to enhance Amazon S3?
Yes, it is very popular to use Amazon S3 as an origin and use the CDN to speed up the delivery of you files and lower costs vs. S3 bandwidth and request charges. It is very easy to setup – just by setting your Origin to Amazon S3.
We highly recommend you use direct S3 URL’s instead of Cloudfront URL’s for your origin settings.
Can I use a Pull Zone to replace Amazon Cloudfront?
Yes, it is very popular to use the CDN to replace Amazon Cloudfront and lower costs for bandwidth and request charges.
Is setting up a Pull Zone provisioned in real time?
Yes, as you create a Pull Zone, the control panel will contact the edge servers and provision your account on each edge.
What is priming cache and how does it works?
Prime Cache is a function that forces the edge servers to refresh their copy of the file requested in the edge servers cache.
What is an Origin?
An Origin is the URL where your original files are stored. This can be shared hosting, a VPS, Amazon S3, or any dedicated server. The Origin is a fully qualified URL that is the root directory of the CDN URL.
Example of an Origin URL could be:
What is a Custom Domain?
A Custom Domain is a subdomain of your primary domain that masks a Zone’s CDN URL.
If I change my Origin Server, what do I have to change for the CDN configuration?
Pull Zones use the IP of the Origin Server for fast requests of Origin Content. If you change the Origin host, it is required to update the IP in the Pull Zone settings.
What is Cache?
Cache are copies of files replicated in memory, allowing future requests for data to be served faster. The default Cache time is 24 hours for Pull Zones.
How do I change the default cache time?
You can set a Cache-Control Header from the Origin Server.
Why and when do I need to purge cache?
Because the Edge Servers in the PoPs Cache web objects, whenever you update a file of the same name, you need to purge cache. You can purge either an individual file or your entire site. It is a bit strenuous to purge the entire site, so it is recommended that you purge one file at a time, unless it is totally necessary to purge everything.
Will the Edge Servers serving my Pull Zone honor my origin settings for headers?
Yes, the Edge Servers will honor all headers from the Origin. The most common are the Cache-Control header and Etags. Set-Cookie headers will be stripped.
How do I use my Pull Zone with W3-Total-Cache?
Please see detailed step-by-step instructions at [W3 Total Cache|FAQ:WordPress - W3 Total Cache].
How do I use my Pull Zone with Drupal?
Please see detailed step-by-step instructions at [Drupal CDN Integration|FAQ:Drupal - CDN Integration].
Am I billed for edge storage or per request with Pull Zones?
No, you are not billed for edge storage or per request with Pull Zones.
Do you support secure tokens for Push/Pull Zones?
We can support adding a special md5 hash string to the end of your Pull and Push Zone CDN URLs. You can emailSupport for more information.
Can I run my whole site through a Pull Zone?
Yes, this is a custom solution setup and would utilize our dynamic full site acceleration product, currently in beta. For more information, or if interested in joining our beta, please email Sales.
I setup a pull zone, but I have 99% cache misses – what can I do? Why does that happen?
It usually means that the files that you are sending to us are coming through as unique and dynamic, usually from a cookie variable string attached to the file. Upon request, we can turn on a feature that will pass-through these requests whereby our caching system will ignore the query string. To request this feature turned on, please email Support.
What type of Cache-Control headers are supported?
We only support “no-cache” and “max-age=” cache control headers. All other types of cache control headers will be ignored.
I’m using the Amazon Elastic (EC2) Load Balancing, Can I still use it after I switch to you CDN solution?
Unfortunately no. We recommend using either haproxy with a dedicated instance or hardcoding an elastic IP into your origin IP. Because of how Amazon Elastic Load Balancer does load balancing with cookie persistence and round robin DNS, it can cause difficulties with our edge caching servers. Feel free to contact us with any specific questions.
I set an expiry header in my .htaccess file for all my files, but they are still being requested very frequently like they are never cached, why?
In 99.9% of the cases, it is because you set a “no-cache” header for your files, we will honor that header like any other header you set on your server. If you’re setting “no-cache”, unset that and everything should be fixed. If you’re not setting this header, contact Technical Support and we’ll investigate and correct the issue.
How can I check the headers from a specific file on my origin, or the CDN easily?
- If you are on a Windows powered machine, the is a web-based tool called Web Sniffer at http://web-sniffer.net/
- If you are on a *nix environment, or you have access to a *nix server, you can use the “curl” command, the syntax is as follows:
# curl -I cdn.netdna.com/favicon.ico
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/0.8.26
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2010 23:59:46 GMT
Content-Type: image/x-icon
Connection: keep-alive
Last-Modified: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 02:56:24 GMT
ETag: "c1-49276bd25a600"
Content-Length: 193
Cache-Control: max-age=31104000
Expires: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 23:59:46 GMT
Pragma: public
X-Powered-By: W3 Total Cache/0.9.1.3
Accept-Ranges: bytes
What is the UserAgent for NetDNA/MaxCDN?
We pass on the client’s UserAgent other than our own, so there is no “Special” NetDNA/MaxCDN UserAgent based identification. However, if you need to filter traffic coming from our servers, contact our support team to get a list of subnets to use for filtering.
Internet Explorer is not caching my files because of the VARY Header, but other browsers are! What do I do?
Add ( BrowserMatch “MSIE” force-no-vary ) to your .htaccess file in order to unset the vary header and allow your content to be cached properly. |
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