When delivering content to a mass consumer, it is critical to ensure the process is optimized. A new feature coming to Azure CDN is designed to accelerate and optimize performance based on scenarios that can be used to deliver content. These scenarios may include delivering “general content” of a website (css files, js files, images, fonts), streaming media, downloading large files, etc. The optimization option will be applied depending on the scenario specified in the “optimized for” parameter when creating the CDN endpoint.
The optimization of Azure CDN uses include caching, partitioning into objects, a retry policy after a failure, depending on the specific scenario. Let’s consider two of the possible scenarios.

Multimedia streaming

Media streaming is time-sensitive, as packets arriving late to the client can cause degradation and frequent buffering. New features allow to reduce the delay in the delivery of multimedia content.

Loading large files

When downloading large files, the ability to split the downloaded file into parts is crucial. The file is requested in small chunks from the beginning to ensure a smooth download.
We apply these improvements based on experience with many clients and continue to add additional options to improve content delivery performance. You can choose a CDN endpoint optimization option for one of the following scenarios:

• Delivery of “general” web content
• Multimedia streaming
• Streaming video on demand
• Loading large files

When creating a new CDN endpoint, select from the drop-down list the scenario that best meets your requirements.
Optimization methods may differ between different CDN providers and are supported depending on the optimization technologies they use, so the available options for optimization scenarios may depend on which CDN provider you choose.
Currently:

• Akamai’s Azure CDN supports options such as general web content delivery, media streaming, video-on-demand streaming, and large file downloads.
• Verizon’s Azure CDN only supports “shared” web content delivery option

We strongly recommend that you test the performance of CDNs from various providers to determine the best option for you.