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CDN

Smart Routing

The fastest way back to your origin

Caching handles the hits. Smart Routing handles everything else: each cache miss and dynamic request takes the quickest healthy path to your origin, around congestion and outages, automatically.
Start freeHow it works

Included with every CDN plan at no extra cost.

Lower origin latency, on average
30%
Automatic failover
<1s
Typical origin fetch
<50ms
Locations, all routed
988

How it works

The internet is unpredictable. The route doesn't have to be.

Public routing picks paths by policy, not by speed, and it's slow to notice when a path degrades. Smart Routing measures instead of assuming.
  1. 01

    Measure every path

    Edge locations continuously probe latency and loss between each other and towards your origin.
  2. 02

    Pick the fastest healthy one

    Each origin request goes out on the best path right now, often via other Edge locations rather than the default route.
  3. 03

    Fail over in under a second

    When a path degrades or drops, traffic moves to the next best one before users see errors.
  4. 04

    Reuse warm connections

    Requests share pooled, already-encrypted connections, so your origin does less work per request.

Instant failover

An outage becomes a blip on a graph

When a transit provider or exchange fails, the public internet can take minutes to re-converge. Smart Routing has already measured the alternatives, so it switches in under a second and retries in-flight requests on the new path.
  • Health checked continuously, not on a timer you set
  • In-flight requests retried, not dropped
  • Traffic returns to the primary path once it recovers

Origin protection

Hundreds of locations, a handful of connections

Without pooling, every edge location opens its own connections to your origin and pays for a TLS handshake each time. Smart Routing funnels misses through a shield tier that keeps a few warm connections open.
  • Fewer connections and handshakes on your origin
  • Lower time to first byte on cache misses
  • Traffic spikes arrive smoothed, not all at once

The difference

Same origin, different journey

Without Smart Routing

  • Latency that changes with the internet's mood
  • Packet loss whenever an exchange is congested
  • Minutes of errors while BGP converges after an outage
  • Every edge location opening its own origin connections

With Smart Routing

  • Consistent sub-50ms origin fetches on typical routes
  • Lossy paths avoided before visitors notice
  • Failover to a healthy path in under a second
  • A few pooled, warm connections to your origin

FAQ

Routing questions

Does Smart Routing affect cached content?
No. Cache hits are answered at the nearest location without going anywhere. Smart Routing only applies when the edge needs to talk to your origin: misses, bypassed paths and dynamic requests.
Do I need to configure anything?
No. It's on for every deployment. Point the CDN at your origin and routing decisions are made for you.
How much faster will my origin fetches be?
It depends on where your origin and visitors are. On average, Smart Routing cuts latency to origin by around 30%, and the biggest gains show up on long, intercontinental paths.
What happens when my origin itself is down?
Routing can go around a broken network, not a broken server. For files that must survive an origin outage, pin them with Edge Cache.

Let the network find the fast path

Every deployment gets Smart Routing from the first request, on the free tier and every plan above it.

Start freePin files with Edge Cache

Free tier: 3 deployments and 500k requests a month, hard-capped. Bandwidth is always $0.