Content Characteristics

This behavior lets you define specific information about your content to optimize its delivery.



Catalog Size

Use this to set the overall volume of objects to be delivered through this property.

  • Small: Select if all of your content is less than 100G.
  • Medium: Select this if all of your content 100G to 1TB.
  • Large: Select this is all of your content ranges from 1TB to 100TB.
  • Extra Large: Select this if all of your content is greater than 100TB.
  • Unknown (Default): Select this if you don't know the volume.

Content Type

If you're delivering a specific type of content with this property, you can select it here to help optimize delivery.

  • Standard Definition: This is typically 480i/p or 720p.
  • High Definition: This is typically 1080i or 1080p.
  • Ultra High Definition (4K)
  • Other: Select this if your use case isn't available for selection, or it is a combination of the available selections.
  • Unknown (Default): Leave it set to this if you're unsure of the specific content type.

Popularity Distribution

Select how often the content is requested:

  • Long Tail: This applies if most of the traffic volume consists of a small number of requests for content that has relatively long life.
  • Popular: This applies if most of the traffic volume consists of a large number of requests for content that has a relatively short life.
  • Other: Select this if your use case isn't available for selection, or it is a combination of the available selections.
  • Unknown (Default): Select this if you're not sure of the popularity level for the content to be delivered by this property.

Origin Object Size

Use this to set a range for the size of the objects delivered through this property:

  • Less than 1MB
  • 1-10MB
  • 10-100MB: Partial Object Caching is automatically enabled with this setting.
  • Greater than 100 MB: Partial Object Caching is automatically enabled with this setting.
  • Unknown: Set to this value if you're unsure of the specific object size, or you don't have a definitive fixed size for target content. Partial Object Caching is not enabled with this setting.

Do you need Partial Object Caching (POC)?

POC is part of our Large File Optimization support. It increases origin server offload by caching in chunks, instead of as a single, composite object. POC is required for the delivery of "large files"—those in excess of 10 MB in size. (It is automatically enabled if you select 10-100MB or Greater than 100 MB as your Origin Object Size.) If you set too small a file size, POC will not be enabled for these larger files, and 403 errors will be returned for requests.

Also, if you specify a "large files" setting, but your origin never actually serves files in that size range, the Akamai platform makes additional requests to the origin. (This can impact overall performance and access.) This happens because the Edge server requests the first byte of each object to determine if the minimum object size criteria (at least 10MB) has been met. Once that check fails, the server simply re-requests the entire object from the origin.

We recommend that you verify the size of your delivery objects on your origin, and select the appropriate size to ensure that POC is enabled or disabled, as necessary.

Tip: Typically, on-demand format video files require a "large file" setting (and POC) because these tend to be larger, composite files. Live video, which tends to be distributed as individual, smaller segments don't require POC, so the "smaller file" settings should be selected as the Origin Object Size. This may not apply to all environments, which is why we recommend that you verify your media file size requirements.

Enable <Media Format>

You can select from multiple switch buttons, for the various media formats supported for use—Enable HLS (HTTP Live Streaming for iOS), Enable HDS (HTTP Dynamic Streaming for Adobe Flash), Enable DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) and Enable Smooth (for Microsoft Smooth Streaming). Set the switch to Yes for each format to be supported by this property. Additional options for each format include the following:

  • Fragment/Segment Duration: Select the desired fragment or segment duration for the selected media format.
  • Origin Object Size. Use this to set a range for the size of media objects delivered through this property—Less than 1MB, 1-10MB, 10-100MB, or Unknown (This is the default, and should be left as the selected setting if you are not sure of the size of objects to be delivered).

Best Practices settings applied by default

We automatically apply various "Best Practices" settings to coincide with the Content Characteristics behavior in your property configuration. (You don't need to manually define these via individual behaviors, because we preset them for optimal performance.)

Feature Setting applied
Optimized For
  • Streaming video on demand (VoD)
  • Media Formats:
    • CMAF
    • DASH
    • HDS
    • HLS
    • Smooth
Streaming Format Identification Your property supports the following formats, and applies best practices settings when they are selected in the property. (They are also used to generate logging and reporting information.)
  • DASH:
    • Manifest: mpd
    • Segments: dash, divx, ismv, m4s, m4v, mp4 1, mp4v, sidx, webm, mp4a, m4a, and isma
  • HDS:
    • Manifest: f4m, f4x, drmmeta, and bootstrap
    • Fragments: f4f and Seg-Frag URL structure
  • HLS:

    • Manifest: m3u8, m3u, m3ub, and key

    • Segments: ts, aac, and mp4 1

  • Smooth
    • Manifest: /manifest/
    • Fragments: /QualityLevels/Fragments/
Note: CMAF is supported for use with live media via an AMD property. (You must set it up to distribute live media via our Media Services Live (MSL) product.) Among other things, you need to generate your media in CMAF format, and you’d select HLS, DASH or both when selecting a Streaming Format in this behavior. (See the Live Streaming with MSL 4.x and AMD - Getting Started Guide for full details on setting up live streaming with AMD.) Logging and reporting information is displayed as the specific format of the manifest actually requested—HLS or DASH.
Segment Durations The property automatically applies the following for segment duration when you select the applicable media format. (This is also used for logging and reporting data.)
  • DASH: Six (6) seconds
  • HDS: Six (6) seconds
  • HLS: 10 seconds
  • Smooth: Two (2) seconds
Basic HTTP Settings
  • HTTP version 1.1
  • Transfer / Chunked encoding between Edge and client
  • Allow GET/HEAD Methods
Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) The following CORS headers are included with the following values:
  • Access-Control-Allow-Origin = *
  • Access-Control-Allow-Credentials = true
  • Access-Control-Allow-Methods = GET, OPTIONS, POST
  • Access-Control-Allow-Headers = origin,range,hdntl,hdnts
  • Access-Control-Expose-Headers = Server,range,hdntl,hdnts
  • Access-Control-Max-Age = 86400
GZIP Content Compression
  • Automatically enabled for origin to edge: This only applies if the Accept-Encoding header is sent in the request to the origin.
  • Automatically enabled for edge to client: This only applies the if Accept-Encoding header is received from client.
Caching
  • The Remove VARY header is sent from origin: This enables content caching.
  • Positive caching policy for response codes: 200, 203, 300, 301, 302 and 410
  • Positive Caching Time to Live (TTL): 365 days
  • Negative caching for response codes: 204, 305, 404, and 405
  • Negative caching TTL:
    • NetStorage as your origin: 30 seconds
    • All other origins: One (1) second
Content Type Based on the selected media formats, the content type header includes the following information:
File Type Content Type Header
m3u8, m3u, or m3ub Content Type: “application/x-mpegURL”
ts Content Type: “video/MP2T”
webvtt or vtt Content Type: “text/vtt”
f4m f4f f4x Content Type: “video/f4m”
mpd Content Type: “application/dash+xml”
dash, divx, mp4, mp4v, m4s, or m4v Content Type: “video/mp4”
web Content Type: “video/webm”
mp4a or m4a Content Type: “audio/mp4”
isma Content Type: “audio/mp4”
ismv Content Type: “video/mp4”
aac Content Type: “audio/aac”
“sidx” / “init” Content Type not added

Content Characteristics and Mixed Mode Configuration

This is a "use case-based" behavior that's automatically included in the Default Rule and used to optimize delivery. You need to apply settings for this behavior in the Default Rule. However, with Mixed Mode Configuration for AMD (MMC), you can also include it in another rule and apply different match criteria to have separate requests use different content characteristics optimizations. For more details, see Mixed Mode Configuration for AMD.

1 If DASH and HLS are both enabled in the same property, this file format is identifed as DASH.