Telin CDN Services: Understanding How ISP

Connectivity Impacts User Experience

As we all know, the outbreak of COVID-19 has driven people to rely on technology and the internet more than ever to help adjust
to the new reality. The internet has become a lifeline for many businesses.

However, surging internet usage has become a challenge as networks begin to falter under increased traffic. Under these
circumstances, some businesses are struggling to stay connected to subscribers and keep their networks running smoothly.

With internet traffic surging during the pandemic, users are increasingly experiencing lags when trying to browse web pages and
videos. Even the most compelling product or presentation risks losing viewers if the experience is undermined by unacceptable
latency.

In an increasingly digital world, latency obviously has major consequences for companies trying to acquire, engage and retain
users. CEOs, CTOs and CFOs increasingly need to take this into account when planning and running their companies in a digital era.
Depending on the way that a company’s network connectivity is designed and implemented, such challenges can be significantly
reduced. This paper examines the role of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) in mitigating these challenges, and how enterprises
can select the right CDN provider. CDN or Content Delivery Networks help the world’s major companies and organizations to
deliver consistent and secure website and application performances. As many CDN servers and close to end users, the
performance of the content delivered will be faster and more reliable. Under this approach, if some servers are congested or
overloaded, other servers can share the load thus maintaining availability.

By doing so, CDN can help improve latency and availability, while guarding against increasingly common and high intensity DDoS
attacks. Telin’s globally distributed server network by partnering with top CDN to provide more coverage in 28 countries and
various advance features fit with your business requirements. Moreover, CDNs enable customers to invest in just enough servers
by offloading content such as image, video, storage to our distributed global server network, thus lowering overall costs.

In addition, incoming traffic will be inspected and filtered through our CDN if it shows undesired anomalies, thus improving
response times as well as your security. Finally, our network is able to adjust and accommodate to demand, maintaining your
enterprise's server availability during peak times.

Measuring the Impact of Latency on User Engagement

We’ve all experienced the frustration of trying to view a website or video which loads too slowly. And as technology has advanced,
user expectations have also increased. A few years ago, “the Eight-Second Rule” was generally applicable, stating that a web page
must open in 8 seconds or else users may leave.

Today, that timeframe has narrowed substantially. Web pages are now expected to load in two seconds. This “Two-Second Rule”
has become the minimum performance benchmark for end user experience. If a web page takes more than two seconds to open,
up to 33% of viewers will potentially abandon it.

Increasing page response time from 2 seconds to 8 seconds 40% 38%

increases page abandonment by 33%
33%
% Increase in Page Abadonment

30%
25%

20%

10% 8%

0%
2 sec to 4 2 sec to 6 2 sec to 8 2 sec to 10

Change in Page Response Time

Reference: Gomez Whitepaper Why Web Performance Matters: Is

Your Site Driving Customers Away?
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Telin CDN Services: Understanding How ISP
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Statistics are similar for video. For every second delay or buffer when starting the video, 5.8% of users will potentially stop
watching. After 10 seconds, more than half of the viewers will drop off, at which point the potential impact to the company’s
bottom line is significant.

Reference: Akamai White Paper Maximizing Audience Engagement - How

Online Video Performance Impacts Viewer Behaviour

Challenges to User Connectivity in Indonesia

Statistics are similar for video. For every second delay or buffer when starting the video, 5.8% of users will potentially stop
watching. After 10 seconds, more than half of the viewers will drop off, at which point the potential impact to the company’s
bottom line is significant.

The problem of latency is particularly salient in Indonesia, which faces a double challenge of fast-accelerating consumption for
internet content together with still limited traffic capacity, especially in non-metro areas. This is especially true for global content,
most of which comes in through the country’s major global Internet Exchange (IX) interconnections located in Jakarta, which is
currently mostly influenced by two IX providers. Thus, information is typically routed through Jakarta; although IX are starting to
emerge in other large Indonesian cities, their capacity and community is significantly smaller than Jakarta at the moment.

As a result, data takes significant time to travel from Jakarta to other cities with latency reaching up to 25ms, especially if the
content that the end users are accessing originates from a different ISP network than the one they are using. In such cases, the
content will be sent by the originating ISP network through the Jakarta IX to that the end user is using. In the case that the IX is
completely congested and unable to accommodate requests from the originating ISP network, the content may be delivered
slowly and in worst scenario even be dropped, in which case the end user won’t be able to access it at all.

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Telin CDN Services: Understanding How ISP
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To counter this problem, enterprises are actively trying to position their content closer to end-users around the country as shown
by the graphic below:

Analysis of Network Latency in Several Indonesian Locations

As previously explained, user experience is affected by latency. The farther the location of the end user in accessing the content,
the greater the latency and the longer it will take for the content to be loaded.

In this experiment, a 3-minute HD video in Jakarta was accessed by users in different cities using a 20Mbps internet connection.
As the illustration shows, once the latency surpassed 20ms, it took more time to download the video than to play it.

From this we can see that distance truly impacts user experience and providing content closer to the end user can measurably
improve customer experience.

Reference: Telin Insights Webinar: How to Manage Traffic Explosion and Gain
User Conversion During the Pandemic

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Telin CDN Services: Understanding How ISP
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The Role of CDN Providers in Mitigating Latency

A simple way to optimize for latency is the choice of Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider. CDNs consist of globally distributed
networks of web services or Points of Presence (PoP), with the goal of providing faster content delivery. The content is stored
throughout the CDN, enabling users to access data stored in the location that is geographically closest. This is significantly more
efficient and faster than the traditional method of storing content on a single, central server. Besides reducing latency, using a
CDN avoids bottlenecks around the central server as clients are able to access the data on multiple servers.

In fact, as the Internet continues to evolve, choosing the right Content Delivery Network (CDN) partner has become a critical
decision in delivering good end user experience. Many enterprises overlook this simple factor in designing for the best user
experience, yet it’s important to look for a CDNs that can deliver content to end users through the most direct route possible, using
the least number of network exchanges.

One way for enterprises to ensure that their users experience minimal latency is to choose a CDN Provider that is able to deliver
content to end users through the most direct route possible, using the least number of network exchanges.

As such, what factors should you consider in choosing the right CDN provider for your needs?

1. Connected to Major ISPs

By connecting to a major ISPs, the number of intended users will be greater and reduce the risk of interconnection needs.
Traffic will be ensure to be delivered in Domestic without risk of overflowed to Global.
2. Presence in Multiple Locations Close to End Users
CDNs that build in multiple locations close to end users will deliver improved content performance because the distance is
reduced.
3. Aftersales Support
Experienced aftersales support to help optimize and troubleshoot are needed. Ensure to subscribe CDN services who have
partnership with Telco because when troubleshooting there could be two types of issue, platform side and network side.
CDN provider will rely on Telco who has access to network on solving both issue rather than other local partner. For
example, in order for the CDN solution to function optimally, it is necessary to adjust with ISP network routing and sync
with the DNS as well.

Reference: Telin Insights Webinar: How to Manage Traffic Explosion and Gain
User Conversion During the Pandemic
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Telin CDN Services: Understanding How ISP
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Use Cases

1. Comparison of CDN Connectivity Before and After Connecting with Major ISP
One of the challenges that enterprises must plan for is how to deal with spikes in demand. The graph below shows
video traffic during a high profile event. Based on our experience, the graph below shows a company’s peak throughput
hitting 10.98 Gbps while average throughput is typically just 1.24 Gps.

To accommodate such spikes, in the past enterprises had to buy a fixed amount of internet typically for a minimum of
one month, even though the event in question might just be two hours long. Now, enterprises can take advantage of
CDN solutions to flexibly accommodate live streaming using the capacity that they already have.

Not all CDN providers are created equal though. For optimum performance, CDN providers need to be connected to
major ISPs so that content can be retrieved domestically, which is important during peak hours. If the CDN has no major
ISPs, it will then be reliant on the limited capacity of Jakarta’s IX, and during peak times, traffic will overflow to the
global network (with Singapore being the closest), resulting in rising latency and impacted user experience.

As an example, users in Jakarta experience average latency of around 5-8 milliseconds when getting content from CDN
servers in Jakarta that are connected to major ISP. In the case the CDN are not connected to major ISP and must be
served via Singapore, average latency will increase to around 20-30 ms. This is why connecting to major ISP is critical to
delivering the best user experience.

2. Impact of Distributed PoP - E-Commerce Case Study

Indonesia is a vast country consisting of thousands of islands. Ensuring consistent user experience is therefore very
challenging. To overcome this challenge, distributed PoPs are important as they can deliver content closer to end users,
thus improving performance. Ideally, CDN providers in Indonesia should have distributed PoPs in at least 5-6 locations
in major cities and islands.

For a comparison, we measured how much time it took end users in several locations took to access E-Commerce
content in Jakarta with and without using distributed PoP.

Access to Jakarta Full Page Download Time (s)

With distributed PoP 4.04

Without distributed PoP 8.91

Result 1.8 Faster

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Telin CDN Services: Understanding How ISP
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The study shows that distributed PoP provided better experience and performance with connection time falling from 8.9s to 4.04s
or around 1.8x faster, compared accessing content directly from Jakarta without using distributed PoP.

This is because users of websites and web applications delivered through a distributed PoP experience faster page loads and
faster transactions than they would otherwise. Users are able to get content from closest PoP without going back and forth to
Jakarta as source of content. This also will ensure service availability as traffic requests are split between the PoPs, compared with
loading all traffic into 1 server location. Thus, it can be seen that CDN provider who operate distributed PoPs will be able to deliver
better performance and user experience.

What are the Benefits of CDS?

Telin’s Content Delivery & Security (CDS) solution operates on a globally distributed platform of servers, ensuring a better and
more secure end user internet experience for your business.

Improve Your Website/Application Performance

CDS can improve content response time by caching static content in servers that are located closer to end users.
High Availability
CDS server are deployed and distributed globally, allowing servers to load balance. Under this approach, if some servers are
congested or overloaded, other servers can share the load thus maintaining availability.
Capacity on Demand
Our CDS network is able to adjust and accommodate to demand, maintaining your enterprise's server availability during peak
times.
Securing Content to End User
Security solution are built in Content Delivery capacity of CDS Server. Each traffic going through CDS Server will be inspected
and filtered if it shows undesired anomalies.
Minimized Investment
Our customers only have to invest in enough servers to handle their dynamic content, since static content can be cached our
distributed global server network.

Customer expectations of digital experience have increased rapidly in recent years, creating new challenges for enterprises
seeking to deliver consistently good experience for users all over Indonesia. In doing so, enterprises need to re-evaluate the digital
tools and providers they are using to ensure that they can deliver good digital customer experience.

Ideally, to reduce complexity, enterprises should look for a one-stop provider that can deliver on all the aspects required including
CDN availability, access to major ISPs, presence in multiple locations so as to bring content closer to end users, and finally
experienced after sales support.

Telin, a member of Telkom Group, owns and operates CDNs in multiple locations and is also a major ISP that has coverage all over
Indonesia as part of Telin's commitment to provide the best user experience.

For further information please visit www.telin.net or email us at marketing@telin.net.

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