Fully Open Edge Cloud

HowTo Use Free CDN Service

How to access and use free CDN service in Rapid.Space
  • Last Update:2020-10-16
  • Version:001
  • Language:en

Rapid.Space provides HTTPS front-ends (HTTP1, HTTP2, HTTP3) in 10 different locations worldwide. In China, Rapid.Space front-ends are places on all major carriers: China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile.

CDN provides a front-end solution to deliver data to end-users or to collect data from IoT. It is similar to Cloudflare or qiniu CDN in China.

  • HTTP2/HTTP3 with SSL/TLS
  • Content caching (Cache-Control, stale-while-revalidate , etc.)
  • Content buffering (fluentd, MQTT, SNMP, kafka, etc.)

The CDN service accelerates content delivery to end-users by reducing the time for end-users to negotiate SSL/TLS sessions and by keeping a copy of content close to end-users.

It can also be used to circumvent network congestion for global deployment of business applications of Web sites.

The CDN service also provides a way to buffer IoT data and forward it to the data processing backend. It reduces the risk of losing IoT data due to network congestion or backend downtime.

Access to the service

Step 1: Login to the Advanced console

First login to Advanced console website (slapos.rapid.space / slapos.xunkongjian.cn). If you already logged in the https://console.rapid.space/ page, click on the Advanced SlapOS UI in the left menu will lead to the login page to Advanced console website. 

Step 2: click on "Get Free CDN!"

There are two options here: "Get Free CDN!" or "Get Free Chinese CDN!". it depends if you need to use frontend outside China or inside China. Both frontend can be used for a service running on a host located inside or outside China. The only thing that matters is if you need your website to be easily accessible from outside China or from inside China. Please note that currently the "Get Free Chinese CDN!" is unavailable yet. so here we talks only about "Get Free CDN!" for accessing outside China.

This action will lead to the configuration page of the frontend:

Step 3: Configure the Frontend

Please fill the following fields in the configuration page:

  • "Title": this is the title of your frontend, it is just to name the service inside the console. A good idea is to name it like your domain
  • "Backend URL" : your service's IPv6 address in the form http://[XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX]:YYYY (YYYY is optional port if your service is listening on a special port). WARNING: the http:// and the brackets are mandatory.
  • "Custom Domain" the domain you purchased, that is xxx.yyy.zzz. Note that if you don't set it, you will get one domain automatically: https://softinstxxxxxx.host.xunkongjian.cn/ or https://softinstxxxxxx.host.vifib.net/ (depending if you asked a frontend for China or not)
  • "Backend Type": you should left it to default (except if your service is an ERP5)

All other types can be left blank.

When above configuration is completed, click on the "Proceed" button at the top of the page. The page will go back to the list of services. The frontend service takes few seconds to appear inside the list of your services. Wait a few seconds and click again on the "Services" button in the left menu.

Click on the frontend service's title to go to the configuration page of the service:

On the screenshot above, the frontend is not ready yet because the "Connection Parameters" are not yet displayed. Please wait 10 or 15 minutes to reload the page and until there are information in the "Connection Parameters", it means the frontend is ready. 

Please note that this free service has certain limitations:

  • Free services are only available for 6 months;
  • Free services can be stopped at any time by Rapid.Space without notification;
  • Free services users may be requested to confirm the services they use every month.

In order to complete the setup for your application to be accessible through frontend, please consult HowTo Setup Vifib Frontend for WordPress as example to set up your own application.