NetDNA Blog

Featured Updates:

Today, the Control Panel v1.2 is released. Among the new features:

• Faster API/Web Interface: Cache Clearing and Zone Provisioning
• Visual Cache Clearing: right from the Dashboard
• Enhanced Security: Against Brute Force Control Panel Login Attacks
• More: Bug fixes and Improvements (listed below)

Faster API/Web Interface:

Previously, when provisioning new Content Zones or Clearing Cache (from the API or the Control Panel Interface), we had been using a single threaded process to connect to each PoP to control it.  This has been re-engineered to be multi-threaded.  Therefore, the time to perform each action would be the time for:

• Edge Location 1 – wait for successful  response + Edge Location 2 -wait for successful response+ …. Edge Location 9 – report success back to browser/API.
  

With version 1.2, we are now doing a multi-threaded process. This will speed up control panel and API speeds buy upto 9x. It works like the following:

• Connect to All Edges at once – wait for responses- report success back to browser/API.

The response is sent back as fast as the PoP that takes the longest.  This will make the API and Control Panel usage more real time.

Clearing Cache right from the Dashboard:

One of the biggest inconveniences in using a CDN for a Pull Zone is managing Cache.  Because of how large cache can become, how I/O intensive it is managing cache on production servers and because of having numerous copies of the cache – we’ve found it hasn’t been obvious in how to make this process easy – until now.  We are starting to release tools (and expect more) to more easily manage cache.  You will now find a visual Purge Cache tool which allows you to easily purge a Zones most frequently accessed files in the “Files” tab of the Dashboard and the “Manage Pull Zone” page:

We continue to listen and  strive to make your CDN experience more fluid and think this feature is a step in the right direction.  Expect more features like this and never hesitate to send us feedback on Cache Purging ideas.

Enhanced Security

Security and reliability are a huge part of our product offering.  Besides hardening our Edge delivery platform, we are focused on enhancing your security with the Control Panel.  In a previous release, we’ve created password strength meters on all important accounts.  In this version, we are doing more security checks for passwords and protection against brute force attacks.   If someone logs into your account 5 times with the wrong password, the account will be locked and you will be notified.

Your account will unlock automatically after 1 hour.  If, in the meantime, you need to access your Control Panel – you can always contact our team for an immediate unlock after you verify ownership of the account.

Other Bug Fixes:

• Updating Zones does not require all fields, just the ones that are being edited
• Fixed footer breaking when viewing email
• Removed the form from push zone creation page

Other Improvements:

• Made it possible to highlight text on zone pages
• Additional backend logging
• Audit trail for all actions performed in Control Panel
• Don’t capitalize the 1st letter of zone names for browser compatibility
• Show hits on Dashboard
• Added “Label” for content Zones
• Show hits for the month on Dashboard
• Created a “Re-Lookup Origin IP” button for Pull Zones
• Provisioning is now multi-threaded for quicker setup of zones
• Improved the error notification when creating Pull Zones

Other New Features:

• Brute force protection
• Implemented banned password list for extra security

A Big “Thank You” to all customers that have been giving us great feedback and to the team responsible for the release: Bryan, Billy, Don, Stephen & David and a special thank to Jan.