New features:

Enhanced Proxy Detection (EPD)

EPD enforces content rights management by blocking access to requests from malicious or anonymous VPNs and proxies. Akamai has collaborated with GeoGuard, a third-party agent which provides the categorized IP dataset, to provide our EPD solution. With this release, EPD has reached general availability status and several new features have been added. Complete details on the use of EPD and these new features can be found in the DD user documentation.

• Support for the Hosting Provider category. GeoGuard offers several categories of protection. Until this release, we didn’t support their “is_hosting_provider” category. This captures IP addresses associated with Cloud and CDN providers. This brought up concerns that Akamai-specific IP addresses may be included if this category was applied. This has been addressed with this release. This category is considered optional and it’s available with Advanced set as your Configuration Mode.
• Header Enrichment. This lets you include the “Akamai-EPD” header in requests to your origin. It tells you if a connecting IP address in a request is associated with an anonymous proxy. This can be especially helpful if you need to check the requester before providing access to your content.
• IPv6 support. We’ve extended the EPD functionality for IPv6 addresses, too. We’ve included best practices and support mitigation actions for all of GeoGuard’s EPD categories.

New feature:

• Reports for Enhanced Proxy Detection (EPD) with GeoGuard. The Media Delivery Reports component in Akamai Control Center now offers the Proxy Protection tab in Historical reports. Use it to monitor how often EPD was applied to requests that were routed through a proxy. We’ve worked with our partner, GeoGuard to establish several “categories” of proxy for this detection (“Anonymous VPN,” “TOR Exit Nodes,” etc.). The reports show you how often a selected action (allow, deny, or redirect) was applied, either for all proxy requests or per individual, GeoGuard proxy category. The reports also show proxy-related request data per individual CP code, so you can review results data per individual property configuration. You can also filter data based on traffic specifics, including secure delivery, non-secure delivery, live content, video on demand content, HLS, and DASH formats. See the Media Delivery Reports User Guide for more details.

New Features:

• Mixed Mode for Download Delivery. This new feature lets you incorporate use case-based behaviors outside of the Default Rule in a Property Manager configuration. You can now set up multiple origin servers in a single property configuration, as well as set different Origin Characteristics, Content Characteristics, and Client Characteristics in different rules, with different match criteria. You can even incorporate different authentication methods for requests using the same property. See the Mixed Mode for Download Delivery document for more information.

Enhancements:

• We’ve improved delivery performance by reducing forward throttling. This enhancement looks to maximize end to end throughput. It safely raises configurable limits to improve delivery performance.

New Features:

• Protocol Downgrade supports the OPTIONS request/method: In addition to the HTTP, GET, and HEAD request/method formats, you can also use OPTIONS with the Protocol Downgrade feature.

Introducing the Edge IP Binding application

This application provides a unified view of all your Edge IP Binding configurations, as well as access to advanced settings. It is open to Edge IP Binding customers, and can be accessed via the Luna Control Center under CONFIGURE > Edge IP Binding.

Contact your Account Representative for more information and to add Edge IP Binding to your contract.

New Features:

• Protocol Downgrade (HTTPS Downgrade to Origin): This has been added as a self-serviceable behavior in the Property Editor in Luna, and it does not require additional entitlement. It lets you downgrade HTTPS requests for Standard TLS and Shared Cert options. Complete details on use can be found in the Download Delivery - Implementation Guide.

As part of self-serviceability enhancements, three new mandatory behaviors called Origin Characteristics, Content Characteristics, and Client Characteristics have been added.

Using these behaviors, appropriate optimizations for the property are automatically applied, including settings for Caching and Tiered Distribution.

These behaviors will automatically be part of new configurations. If you update an existing configuration, you will need to add these behaviors (by clicking ‘Add Behavior’ in the Behaviors section of Property Manager). If you aren’t sure which options to select in a new behavior’s drop-down lists, you may leave them set to the default settings of ‘Unknown,’ in which case the Behavior will not take effect. It is a best practice to test configuration changes in staging before deploying to production.