CDNetworks and guest speaker Forrester Research, Inc. explore the various web performance and regulatory challenges companies must overcome to effectively deliver web content and applications within the Great Firewall.

1. Demystifying China Online
2014’s Key Market Challenges
Presented by Sponsored by: Featuring:

2. Forrester’s clients say about doing business in China…
Operational challenges are
not intuitive
Laws/regulations are difficult
to navigate and constantly
evolving
Local expertise is difficult to
acquire
You need local relationship
to survive
China needs to be treated as a
separate entity – not as an
expansion of existing
business

3. The “Great Firewall of China” creates unique problems
› Router blocks:
• 97% of international routers are blocked
• 3% of internal routers are blocked
› Preferential treatment from agency to agency
• Grounds for blocking are inconsistent and subjective
• Some blocks are temporary or due to internal agency mistakes
› All domains are subject to being blocked
• Over 2,500 foreign domains are blocked in China – including some of the biggest and
most used in the U.S. including Facebook and Twitter
› Lag in load time
• Loading a non-Chinese hosted webpage takes an additional 10-15 seconds when
accessed in China

4. © 2013 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited
4
Response time in China is far slower than that in
other markets

5. © 2014 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 5
Online consumers prefer link saturated sites

6. Web content hosted outside of China often has
performance challenges
TCP/IP round
trip time
Http round
trip time (for
a single
object)
Firewall
filtering
Response
time for a
single object
Response
time for a
typical web
page
Between
China and
US/Europe
(measured
on a single
object)
600MS
2,000 –
3,000 MS
450 MS ~3 seconds
20-30
seconds
Your users in
China will feel the
pain!

7. Southern China:
Telecom territory
Northern China:
Unicom territory
The great divide between the north and the south …

8. Source: China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC)
Nearly 50% of internet users in China are in rural areas where the internet
connection is unreliable and processing times are extremely slow

9. Licensing requirements can be a barrier to entry when
hosting a website in China
› Beian (Record Bureau) & Gongan (Public Security Bureau) Licenses
• Required for all websites hosted and delivering from within the Great Firewall
› Internet Content Provider (ICP) License
• Required for all websites with a shopping cart
› Additional licenses may be required for:
• Education
• Healthcare
• News/media
• Pharmaceutical

11. In the case of Uniqlo, the holding company and the
flagship site also had to be registered on the ICP license

12. Some content is easier to host in China than others
Content Type Likelihood to be blocked
Adult/pornography Forbidden
Gambling Forbidden
Political Forbidden
Anti-government Forbidden
Religious High
User-generated (SNS, BBS, blog, sharing) High
News High
Gaming Medium
Entertainment Medium
Software Low
Enterprise Low
e-Commerce Low

13. Option #1: Move content closer to the greater China area
Hong Kong and
Singapore are two
common hosting
locations

14. Content distribution speeds with content closer to China
Http round trip
time (for a single
object)
Firewall filtering
Total delay (for a
single object)
With direct
peering
connection to all
three major ISPs
in mainland
100 MS 450 MS 550 MS
No direct peering
connection
300 MS 450 MS 700 – 800 MS
The limiting factor
with this option is
poor connectivity and
firewall filtering

15. Challenges with hosting close to China, but outside of
China
› Choosing a hosting provider can be tricky
› The great firewall blocks IP
› Sites hosted on the same server (or same IP block)
as questionable content will also be blocked

16. Option #2:Host content in Mainland China

17. Southern China:
Telecom territory
Northern China:
Unicom territory
The great divide between the north and the south
requires mirrored sites
The sparse bandwidth between the south
and the north means you need mirrored
sites in both territories

18. Setting up websites in China is a complex operation
› Businesses must apply for a government-issued
license - licenses vary for each type of site
› The rules for obtaining licenses are confusing
and procedures unclear
› Rules and regulations for obtaining a license
change frequently
› Licenses takes longer to acquire and are under
more scrutiny for western brands
› Local operation requirements

19. Option #3: Hosting externally with a CDN within China
Geographic
coverage is key

20. Using a CDN significantly reduces delivery time
Don’t do
anything
Hosting close to
China
Hosting in China
With CDN
acceleration
User
performance
3 seconds (for a
single object)
450 MS 10 – 300 MS 30 MS
Efforts involved
Easy Medium:
Finding a good
hosting provider
can be
challenging
High: Business
must do
everything.
Finding a
hosting provider,
applying for
licenses and
keeping up with
regulations
Easy to
Medium: CDN
partner manages
licenses and
regulations
ROI Time
Frame
N/A – will see
little incremental
growth
Slow Medium Fast

21. Criteria to choosing a CDN partner in China
› Local coverage
• Being able to deal with the north-south divide
• Deliver good performance all over China
› Local know-how and expertise
• Knowing how to deal with the evolving regulation landscape in China
• Manage regulatory compliance for you
› Local relationships
• Good relationship with local ISPs and network peering points

22. Criteria to choosing a right CDN partner in China
› Global operations
• The ability to deliver content in and out of China
› Global know-how
• A mature business that knows how to do business with multi-national companies
› Global management
• Let you have a global understanding of how your web content is being delivered
› Mobile optimization
• Help optimize the payload sent over the network by compressing images and
page structure based on current network conditions (e.g., 3G versus 4G), thus
helping the slow lane go as fast as possible.

23. Global Content Delivery Network
• Accelerating over 40,000 sites across 140+ PoPs around the globe
• Only Global CDN with a presence inside of Mainland China (25 PoPs)
• Integrated solutions: Performance, Security and Scalability
• Industry leaders in reaching emerging markets

24. Great Firewall – Slower Websites
40% slower
download time
64kB object downloaded from
Test agents inside of China
• Guangzhou (inside China)
• Hong Kong (outside China)
Source: NetworkBench results, Sep. 2012

25. Distance = Latency
Downloadtime(sec)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
London
Paris
Geneva
Frankfurt
Oslo
Madrid
Milan
Istanbul
NewYork
NewDelhi
LosAngeles
SaoPaulo
Tokyo
Sydney
Seoul
KualaLumpur
BuenosAires
Taipei
Chengdu
HongKong
Beijing
Guangzhou
Singapore
Xian
Site performance degrades as distance increases
Source: Source: CDNetworks network monitoring POP latencies, 2012

26. Also found increasing load time of
the page from 400ms to 900ms –
led to 25% reduction in traffic
Why Does it All Matter?
Faster Sites Perform Better
Found a 100ms of delay
reduced revenue by 1%
Found that speeding up their
website by 5 seconds increased
their conversion rates by 7-12%
and doubled # of visitors from
search engine traffic
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
TBs
Social Gaming Customer
Go-Live: Feb. 2012
3.7x traffic in 6 months
Source: Source: CDNetworks Performance Monitoring, 2012

27. The Options…
Add more Datacenters
• Attempt to get close to end-users
• Expensive
• Complex
• Sync problem
• Doesn’t solve performance issue
1
HW Appliances
• Expensive
• Need IT team
• No support for remote
end users
2
Traditional CDN
• Only focused on caching
• Doesn’t support client-server
apps
3
ADCWOC
WOC
Cache
Cacheable
Non-cacheable

28. Next Presentation – Get Faster & More Reliable
Web Performance in China
www.uschina.org www.cdnetworks.com www.forrester.com