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CDN Provider Performance Monitoring: Best CDNs in the UK

This blog continues our best CDN series. Today we will be analyzing content delivery network performance and uptime in the United Kingdom over the last seven and 30 days.

Tip: Are you new to CDNs? Visit our What is a CDN resource to learn more.

Out of a population of 67+ million, nearly 95% of UK residents are internet users. The UK has enjoyed a flourishing online economy for many years, with 2019 seeing $693 billion GBP in sales.  

Statistic: E-commerce sales in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2014 to 2019 (in billion GBP) | Statista
Find more statistics at Statista

In 2020, 87% of purchases were made in Great Britain alone. This is a clear indicator that fast and reliable CDNs are critical for both small and enterprise-level businesses in the UK.

How do you know which content delivery network is best for the UK? Easy—by analyzing the data. So let’s get to it!

Best CDNs UK: CDN Speed Comparison

Below is a graph of the top 10 performing CDNs in the United Kingdom over the last 30 days.

Provider

Speed (milliseconds)* 

Limelight

18.77

Edgecast

19.06

jsDelivr

19.26

AWS

19.68

Fastly

19.68

CacheFly

19.9

5cents

19.94

Akamai

21.29

Google Cloud

21.58

BlazingCDN

21.58

*last 30 days of this writing

The data above gives us an overview of the fastest CDN providers in the UK. The graph also gives us insight into the stability and performance of each compared provider. Of course, fluctuations occur over time, which is why we’ll also be examining the same providers within a 7-day window below.  

Provider

Speed (milliseconds)* 

Limelight

19.75

Edgecast

20

jsDelivr

20

AWS

20.25

CacheFly

20.5

Fastly

20.63

5cents

20.75

Akamai

21.13

BlazingCDN

22.5

Google Cloud

23

*last 7 days of this writing

So what does this data tell us?

Besides the average speed for each of these CDNs over 30 and 7-day windows, we can see that overall, the UK has excellent content delivery network coverage from these top 10 providers. In some of our previous analyses in other regions, we’ve noticed much larger discrepancies in speeds in each timeframe. While Limelight, Edgecast, jsDelivr, and AWS hold the top four spots consistently, each is only marginally faster than the other, and the rest of the six providers are close on their heels.

Best Content Delivery Network Uptime UK

Okay, so we know speeds are comparable between this group of CDN providers. But uptime is just as important, if not more so than speed. This time, we’ll be analyzing the CDNs by uptime, which will give us greater insight into the reliability of each.  

Uptime analysis, last 30 days

Provider

Uptime (percentage)* 

AWS

99.27

Edgecast

99.24

Fastly

99.2

jsDelivr

99.14

CacheFly

99.13

5cents

99.08

Google Cloud

99.08

Limelight

98.29

BlazingCDN

96.63

Akamai

90.21

*last 30 days of this writing

When analyzing average uptime, we see a much different ranking. AWS jumps to the #1 spot while Limelight drops 3rd to last and Akamai falls to last place.  

Let’s take a look at the last seven days to see how uptime compares.

Uptime Last Seven Days

Provider

Uptime (percentage)* 

AWS

99.21

Fastly

99.16

Edgecast

99.16

CacheFly

99.13

jsDelivr

99.06

5cents

99.03

Google Cloud

98.98

Akamai

98.94

LimeLight

98.31

BlazingCDN

96.16

*last 30 days of this writing

Once again, we see a shift in rankings when examining 7-day uptime averages. AWS holds strong at #1, with Fastly, Edgecast, and CacheFly close behind, while Akamai rose to 7th place and Blazing CDN dropped to last. Keep in mind that this data is based on real-user monitoring (RUM) measurements and doesn’t reflect the actual uptime of these providers. It also doesn’t mean any were actually down or non-functioning. Some inconsistencies can occur, but this is still valuable intel into individual CDN stability and reliability.

Multi-CDN Solution: Avoid CDN Outages and Increase  Performance

Considering the critical role that CDNs play in delivering online content, it’s important that brands choose the fastest and most reliable CDNs in the areas where their customer base is most concentrated. It’s equally important for CDN providers to offer a superior content delivery experience for their customers. That said, with the volatile nature of CDNs, it’s best practice for companies to use two or more CDNs.

Of course, managing multiple CDNs can become a laborious task. Fortunately, there are multi-CDN services that solve this pain point. Using a Multi-CDN solution not only prevents outages, but it also boosts overall performance too.

Two notable Multi-CDN services are:

Analytics For CDNS: Top-Performing Content Delivery Networks Are a Must in the UK

Speed and reliability is “king” when it comes to content delivery. With PerfOps, CDN providers and organizations have access to powerful, unbiased data to help them make informed decisions.  Brands can view and compare providers and analyze performance, and CDN providers can see how they compare against other providers and use the data to troubleshoot and improve network efficiency.