What is Static Content?

Static content is content that does not require any special processing by MetaCDN before it is distributed on our Content Delivery Network (CDN). Examples of static content are:

• Images, such as jpeg, png and gif files
• Web elements such as hypertext (html) files and Cascading Style Sheets (css) files
• Javascript (js) files
• Documents such as Word (doc, docx), Powerpoint (ppt,pptx), Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf)
• Archived files such as zip, tar and gzipped (gz)
• Executable files (exe, bin)
• And many more... You are not limited to the list above!

These files can be loaded to MetaCDN and will be distributed "as-is". Your customers will benefit from MetaCDN's reliable hosting and fast, localized delivery of your important content.

What are my deployment options?

There are a number of choices you can make that influences how we distributed your content. If you choose Automatic for the Target Locations option, we will manage all aspects of your content delivery on your behalf. This is the default choice. This means we will:

• Decide which locations to deploy your content based on it's popularity in certain regions
• Decide how many copies of your content we host
• Give you a high performance MetaCDN DNS URL to reference your content that resolves using Anycast DNS (such as http://cdn-1.metacdn.net/joebloggs/myfile.ext)

If you select Custom for the Target Locations option then you are given a number of options to control how your deployment is managed. This means you can:

• Choose specific locations where MetaCDN will deploy your content, guaranteeing the content will be available in that location regardless of demand.
• Choose whether you want duplicates of your content in each location (if available). If you choose Yes, MetaCDN will deploy multiple copies of your content in the same region if there is more than one Point of Presence (PoP) in a given region. This maximises availability and uptime of your content.
• Reference your content using a MetaCDN URL reference to your content that resolves using the MetaCDN gateway. (such as http://www.metacdn.com/r/c/5bvItt/btauQ)

So which is the best option for me?

We recommend you use Automatic as Target Location option, unless you are expecting a low volume of traffic from users in a specific geographic location.

I've submitted my content.  Now what happens?

The system will go off and replicate (copy) your content file to the requested locations.  If you have specified locations manually, the content will become active and accessible via the MetaCDN Url as soon as one of the copies (or 'replicas' as we call them) have been successful.  For automatic location deployments, the replication has to be successful to all our providers before the content is accessible via the MetaCDN Url.  The replication process is almost instantaneous for small files.  Large files can take many minutes (or hours) depending on size and network conditions.  By default, the system will email you when the content becomes accessible (active).

You can see the current state of processing by viewing the contentstatus and replication status keywords.  These are revealed through the 'Manage' section of the dashboard, by clicking on the triangle at the right of the Content entry you wish to examine.  The table below shows a definition of the possible keywords and what they mean. 

Content status table.

Replication status table.