Edgecast - Small vs Large

There are two platforms that specialize in serving static content over the HTTP and HTTPS protocols, which are HTTP Large and HTTP Small. The use of these platforms for serving data from your website is not mutually exclusive. In fact, an optimal configuration usually involves both of these platforms to serve your entire website's content. We will now take a closer look at both platforms.

Although the HTTP Large platform can serve any type of asset over the HTTP/HTTPS protocol, it specializes in the delivery of large assets, as well as those that are not downloaded as frequently. The size of an asset delivered by this platform is usually greater than 300 KB. The typical applications for this platform includes the delivery of videos, high resolution images, audio content, online games, software downloads, and software updates. This platform supports a variety of data delivery methods, such as by file, by chunk, or even byte serving.

The HTTP Large platform supports video streaming using HTTP Progressive Download, and should be used if you need HLS/HDS. If you would like to use a different protocol to stream video (e.g., RTMP), then you should use the Flash Media Streaming platform.

Unlike the HTTP Large platform, the HTTP Small platform serves cached content straight from RAM. This reduces the amount of time spent on disk transactions whenever a customer views your web pages. Since assets are being served from RAM, it is highly recommended that you only serve assets that are requested frequently and that are smaller than 300 KB on this platform. This is why this platform is ideal for most website content, including websites that take advantage of ad serving, e-commerce, and photo sharing capabilities. The types of assets that most of these sites employ are small in nature and are requested frequently. For example, a typical website will require that a user download HTML, CSS, JS, and thumbnail image assets.

Last but not least, the Advanced Analytics feature is available only for the HTTP Large platform.