Route users to the most optimal CDN based on real-time global performance data
Performance driven traffic management
NS1 Pulsar uses Real User Monitoring (RUM) data and intelligent traffic steering to automatically direct each request to the best-performing CDN in real time. Improve end user experience, reduce cost and ensure reliability across every digital experience.
Features
- Real user monitoring data
- Intelligent traffic routing
- Actionable observability and reporting
- Flexible data collection and control
- API based decisioning
Uncover CDN bottlenecks with real-world data
Leverage NS1’s aggregated RUM benchmarks across 20+ public CDNs and cloud regions or collect private measurements. Automatically capture real-world performance and availability data from actual users to uncover bottlenecks and identify issues that synthetic monitoring often misses.
Optimized traffic steering with RUM insights
Set performance thresholds and business logic to optimize traffic distribution. Combine RUM data with NS1 Connect Filter Chains, Data Feeds and Health Check monitors. Balance CDNs to meet cost commitments while maintaining performance standards. Optimize delivery by geography and ASN.
Clear visibility into traffic steering choices
Analyze RUM data to detect performance spikes and degradations in real time. Review traffic distribution routing decisions and key metrics to clearly understand the reasoning behind routing choices and how performance outcomes were achieved.
Boost delivery with API-driven traffic steering
Collect private RUM data via NS1 Connect’s JavaScript tag for real-time with real-time performance insights from users. Bring your own performance or QoE metrics. Automate configuration changes using NS1’s APIs and SDKs.
Dynamic CDN routing for faster experiences
Automate CDN decisioning for seamless workflow integrations. Enable dynamic CDN switching in real time based on performance signals, ensuring optimal delivery without relying solely on server-side routing logic.
Usage scenarios
- Streaming and media
- E-commerce and retail
- Financial services
- Gaming
- SaaS and web applications
- Infrastructure ops
Deliver flawless events at scale
Major streaming platforms rely on NS1 Pulsar to route billions of requests during live sporting events, concerts and breaking news platforms. By monitoring real user performance across multiple CDNs, content reaches viewers with minimal buffering and maximum quality. Automated failover ensures continuity even during traffic spikes or provider issues.
Keep revenue flowing during peak seasons
Online retailers use Multi-CDN Steering to maintain performance during peak shopping rushes. When one CDN experiences congestion or latency spikes, traffic automatically shifts to better-performing alternatives. This ensures fast page loads, smooth checkout experiences and prevents card abandonment during your most critical periods.
Ensure always-on access
Financial services firms leverage NS1 Pulsar for mission-critical applications where milliseconds matter and downtime is unacceptable. Real-time routing based on actual user latency ensures platforms are accessible quickly from anywhere in the world. Protect against provider outages, maintaining 24/7 availability for time-sensitive transactions and market data.
Optimizing gaming traffic for low latency
Gaming companies use intelligent traffic steering to deliver low-latency experiences across diverse global audiences. NS1 Pulsar routes players to the optimal CDN based on their specific network and location, reducing lag and improving gameplay. Keep players connected and engaged, even during major game launches and events.
Optimize global app performance automatically
Enhance reliability for globally distributed applications with intelligent, RUM-driven traffic steering that adapts to changing internet conditions. Automatically adapt to changing network conditions, optimize latency and availability and ensure consistent user experiences across regions, CDNs and cloud providers.
Ensure resilient global infrastructure
Infrastructure teams leverage NS1 Pulsar to orchestrate traffic across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with precision. Route users to optimal origins, CDNs or cloud regions based on real-time performance data, eliminating guesswork from failover decisions. Automate responses to degraded performance or capacity constraints while maintaining granular control through APIs and Terraform.
Client spotlight
GlobalDots delivers a premium multi-CDN service for businesses where every second counts. To ensure speed, resilience, and revenue protection, the GlobalDots Super CDN adds intelligent routing across 30+ CDNs using IBM® NS1 Connect®.
This highly automated solution optimizes traffic steering for peak performance.
Learn more
FAQ
Multi-CDN Steering is a traffic management approach that intelligently routes user traffic across multiple content delivery networks based on real-time performance, availability and business rules to improve reliability, speed and user experience. NS1 Connect Pulsar is IBM’s advanced multi-CDN steering solution.
Yes, NS1 Pulsar enables cost-based routing policies that can steer traffic to lower-cost CDNs when performance requirements are met or shifting load when you reach your committed usage, helping you optimize your committed CDN spend.
NS1 Connect Pulsar is vendor-agnostic and works with all CDN providers including Cloudflare, Akamai, AWS CloudFront, Fastly and others. It sits at the DNS layer, acting as a neutral measurement engine and traffic controller across your CDN stack. Pulsar also supports measuring assets hosted on your private CDN for users with hybrid CDN strategies.
NS1 Connect offers API-first, DNS (or HTTP) based integration that allows teams to deploy multi-CDN steering quickly without changes to application code or infrastructure. Most teams can configure multi-CDN Steering in minutes with turnkey community data and can make configuration changes on the fly.
Pulsar can detect failures within seconds, automatically rerouting traffic to healthy alternatives before users experience downtime. The system processes real-time data from millions of measurement points globally, enabling instant traffic steering decisions that adapt to CDN failures, network congestion or any performance degradation – ensuring your applications stay available even during major internet disruptions.
Pulsar measures time-to-last-byte (TTLB) and availability of assets hosted on each of the CDNs. Measurements collected from real users are anonymized and aggregated by CDN, geography and ASN. Different asset sizes can be measured for private data with the NS1 community data supporting both latency (1x1 pixel) and large assets for some CDNs.
Yes, Pulsar can be used to route traffic alongside standard traffic filtering to balance traffic based on latency, geography, server load, network, synthetic health checks and more. Ensuring that none of your origins are overloaded and can stay online.
No, since Pulsar is seamlessly integrated with NS1 Connect’s managed and dedicated networks with built-in DDoS resiliency, you can deploy your multi-CDN traffic configuration to both networks that are designed for scale and performance.
Footnotes
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