Get Ready for a China CDN

Using a CDN to deliver content to worldwide users has become a standard practice for companies with global reach. many of the global CDN providers have impeccable performance delivering customer’s content in most part of the world, but when it comes to China, even the most experienced global providers would be scratching their heads because of the complex network environment in Mainland China.

When looking to successfully launch service into China, it is important to keep in mind that China’s Internet is a unique network operating within China’s Great Firewall. For foreign hosted services, all traffic must enter Mainland China through a limited number of international gateways – all of which are filtered by the Great Firewall. To reduce the latencies caused by the GFW, it is in a company’s best interest to adopt a China CDN solution on top of a global CDN.

Before integrating a China CDN solution into your service delivery plan, there are several points to consider.

Content

Certain types of content, such as gambling and adult content, are banned in Mainland China. However, even if your own content is 100% legal and good for China delivery, there may be third party links on your website that could cause failures. The default mechanism of the Great Firewall is used to filter content is to scan the domain names and URLs for banned keywords or pre-identified problematic companies/providers, and deny those addresses.

ICP License

Issued and governed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), the license is a company’s entry permit to the Internet world in China.

Before 2018, the regulations on the ICP license were relatively loose and it was easier to obtain a license. When Chinese government enforced new regulations on the ICP license starting January 1, 2018, which requires the company applying for the ICP license to have a China business entity and a website with a Chinese domain registrar. The new rules apply not only to new applications submitted after the regulation became effective but also all existing applications filed before the date. The MIIT began to look into past ICP license applications, and anything that was not compliant with the new rules got revoked. Hosting providers, including ChinaCache, are strictly forbidden to serve a client’s website in China until an official ICP filing or license has been obtained.

Other than staying compliant with Chinese laws and regulations, there are more things to have in mind:

• Domain name
• Security module
• Global Server Load Balancer
• SSL certificate
• Traffic/Request type
• …

To read the full China CDN Readiness checklist, click here to download it.