Foreword

Zenlayer, a global edge cloud services provider, offers on-demand connectivity through its vast network of more than 180 PoPs. The company works closely with AWS as a certified premium partner and AWS ISV Accelerate member.
Zenlayer and AWS share the same vision of bringing fast and reliable connectivity into global markets. Together, the two companies are helping enterprises gain high speed connectivity to the cloud. The partnership jointly improves overall business operations, accelerates technological innovation and development, and enhances digital experiences for worldwide clients.

Zenlayer & AWS Joint Solution

Common Cross-Border Operational Challenges for Businesses 
End-users often experience poor quality and lag when accessing content across gaming platforms, live streaming platforms, transaction engines, e-commerce websites, and internal systems. Poor connectivity also impacts third-party applications like AWS Chime, Simple Cloud Storage Service (S3), AppStream, Workspace, IoT Core, and GitHub.
It typically takes too long to download data from servers, resulting in repeated interruptions and failures. Slow data synchronization is common between servers on and off the cloud, and between regional clouds. Synchronization time often exceeds the acceptable range for most businesses.

Advantages of Zenlayer’s Joint Solution with AWS
Zenlayer helps end-users reach global AWS source locations through local nodes, using high-speed, low-latency channels and intelligent routing. This greatly reduces lagging and latency, granting users instant access to digital applications and services regardless of their location.

Less complexity: Clients can focus more on business development instead of connectivity. Zenlayer’s secure, reliable, and cost-effective services grant extremely fast inter-cloud interoperability. In addition, Zenlayer eliminates issues like lagging, display errors, and dropouts for all types of applications. Clients also benefit from faster file transfer speeds and reduced web page load times, for more effective collaboration and operational efficiency.

Improved revenue: The solution guarantees smooth, real-time content delivery for games, live streams, online education, financial transaction engines, e-commerce websites, and internal enterprise systems. This greatly improves the end-user experience, leading to continuous and stable revenue.

Reduced costs: The dynamic expansion of edge nodes brings client services closer to end-users. This eliminates the need to replicate source site content and avoids costly and time-consuming construction.

Efficient operations: The solution provides stable data management and high-speed transmissions. This reduces backend work for O&M personnel and developers and prevents downtime. As a result, staff members can focus on more pressing tasks.

Easy to order: Businesses can purchase the solution directly through the AWS Marketplace. The ordering procedure is convenient and supports bill consolidation.

Customer Case Study: How Firmoo uses Zenlayer and AWS to Accelerate Across Borders

Firmoo is a leading cross-border eyewear marketplace. The company serves over 1 million customers globally and ranks among the top global eyewear providers.

Firmoo mainly serves customers across the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific, and has AWS servers in North America, Europe, and Hong Kong. Clients can automatically connect to the nearest trading server when browsing. The sellers, which mainly operate in mainland China, use a variety of strategies to advertise products such as static page displays and live streaming.

Problems Faced by Firmoo
Scenario 1: Sellers in China use Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) to upload video streams to overseas servers. This causes significant lag and doesn’t support real-time interactions for buyers. The company needed to accelerate servers connecting sellers to key destinations in Hong Kong, Germany, and the U.S. Due to the distributed nature of the company’s sellers, Firmoo couldn’t deploy traditional acceleration devices.
Scenario 2: Due to poor internet quality, it can take several minutes to download a log file of only a few MB. As a result, downloads often fail. This makes it very difficult for R&D and O&M staff to update and maintain the company’s overseas AWS servers.

How Zenlayer is Helping Firmoo
Solution for Scenario 1: In the first scenario, Zenlayer provides accelerated Cname access to Firmoo through Zenlayer Global Accelerator (ZGA). Firmoo’s domain name managers then add the Cname information to the trading platform’s domain name on its management platform, and use the GSLB system to achieve global intelligent DNS resolution.

When a domestic seller visits the trading platform and starts live streaming, the DNS server automatically routes the traffic to Zenlayer’s domestic PoP according to the IP corresponding to the domain name Cname. Based on the background configuration, the server distributes the video stream through Zenlayer’s global backbone network to the U.S., Germany or Hong Kong to provide access to the source site.

The combination of a global backbone network and ZGA eliminates long distance transmissions, and prevents issues like delay, lag, and packet loss. This enables seamless real-time interactions between sellers and buyers. The improved trading experience also increases customer trust in Firmoo’s global e-commerce platform and brings continuous and stable traffic to the company.

Key Takeaways:

Deploying ZGA is fast and simple, and only takes about half a day.
Migration doesn’t impact end users. There is no need to install any software or hardware.
The global backbone network offers stable, high-quality connectivity.

Solution for Scenario 2: For the second scenario, Firmoo has a private access gateway instance in the China node of the global acceleration platform. In addition, Firmoo uses a firewall in the Chongqing office to establish a tunnel to Zenlayer’s global backbone network through an IPSec VPN.

Zenlayer now provides DX connections to all 23 AWS regions worldwide. In addition, Firmoo has virtual connections to several AWS regions in the U.S., Germany, and Hong Kong. The Zenlayer backbone network and Firmoo’s VPC connect via VIF.

The Zenlayer global backbone network creates a private connection channel and intranet between Firmoo’s Chongqing office and its overseas AWS servers. When O&M and R&D personnel access the VPC through this channel, they now avoid routing data long distance over the public internet. This significantly boosts productivity and efficiency.

 Key Takeaways:

The global backbone network offers private lines for stable quality and high speeds.
Overseas PoPs use DX to connect directly to VPC, resulting in higher quality last mile connectivity.
Firmoo now has a variety of access methods, with flexible choices for users.

Chart: 24-Hour Monitoring of the Line Quality

As the above chart demonstrates, Zenlayer improves the connection quality between Firmoo’s Chongqing office to the overseas AWS VPC. Intranet quality is now very stable, with a line jitter less than 3.5 MS and a 0% packet loss rate.

Future Outlook

By working with Zenlayer and AWS, Firmoo benefits from a website that is much stabler and more responsive. This improves the live viewing experience for customers, resulting in greater satisfaction and higher revenue.

Accelerate with Zenlayer and AWS

AWS customers can register for ZGA through the AWS Marketplace. Metered and bandwidth billing options are available.
For more information about ZGA, visit the product page or sign up for a free trial today.