Set up for testing

To actually set up for testing, you need to complete multiple tasks.



Activate your property on the Staging network

To perform actual testing of your DD property, you need to activate it on the Staging network in Control Center.

  1. Select the appropriate Control Center Account. Use the top-right pull-down in the header to select the account.
  2. Access Property Manager configurations associated with the selected Control Center Account. Go to > CDN > Properties.
  3. Filter the results of the Property Groups table by inputting the desired DD property name in the Filter by Property or Hostname field.
  4. Click the Property Name.
  5. In the Manage Versions and Activations content panel, click the applicable Version <#> link to access it for testing.
  6. Click the Activate tab.
  7. Select the Activate v<#> on Staging button.


  8. Any warnings carried over from the configuration will be displayed as Validation Messages. You can click Cancel and edit the Configuration to acknowledge them.
  9. Optionally, add descriptive Notes and/or use the Notify via email field to define e-mail address(es) that will receive notifications in the event of a Property file change (separate multiple entries with a comma--“,”)
  10. Click the Activate v<#> on Staging button.
  11. Monitor the Activate tab to track progress. You can also click the “View Details” link to review settings and information regarding the Property. The version should be active in the testing environment in about ten minutes.


Point your browser to Edge servers

For testing, set up your local browser to target an applicable Edge server to access your property.

  1. Select the appropriate Control Center Account. Use the top-right pull-down in the header to select the account.
  2. Access Property Manager configurations associated with the selected Control Center Account. Go to > CDN > Properties.
  3. Filter the results of the Property Groups table by inputting the desired DD property name in the Filter by Property or Hostname field.
  4. Click the Property Name.
  5. In the Manage Versions and Activations content panel, click the applicable Version <#> link to access it in the Property Manager Editor.
  6. In the Property Hostnames content panel, locate and make note of the Edge Hostname.

  7. Look up that hostname’s IP address, and copy it to your clipboard using one of these methods:
    • Windows: Open a new command prompt, and perform an “nslookup” of your Edge Hostname.
    • MacOS: Open a new terminal, and perform a “dig” of your Edge Hostname.
  8. Open your local hosts file in a text editor. Based on your operating system, you may be able to find your host file as follows:
    • Windows: Navigate to \system32\drivers\etc\hosts
    • MacOS: Navigate to /etc/hosts
    • UNIX/Linux: Navigate to /etc/hosts
      Note: The above paths are only examples of where this file might be found. Please see the relevant user documentation for the location of the Hosts file for your selected operating system.
  9. At the end of the hosts file, add an entry for your website that includes the Edge Hostname’s IP address (which you found in Step 9) and your property’s domain. For example: 1.2.3.4 www.techpubs-video.com
  10. Save and close your hosts file. All requests from your computer to your domain will now go to an Edge server.
    • This applies to your local system, only.
    • To undo the redirection to the Edge server, remove the new entry from your hosts file.

Confirm that your machine is pointed to an Edge server

You can run through these steps to verify that your machine is pointing to an Edge server.

  1. Open a new browser window, and clear your cache.
  2. Open the HTTP analyzer plug-in that you already installed.
  3. In your browser, go to a page you want to test.
  4. View the return headers in the “HTTP analyzer” (or equivalent, based on the browser in use), and check if the “X-Cache” entry is present. In the example below, the X-Cache header and its value are bold:
    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache/2.4.9 (Unix) OpenSSL/1.0.1-fips
Last-Modified:Wed, 26 Jun 2013 18:28:37 GMT
ETag: "6795-3j012d0468q42"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 13162
Content-Type: image/gif
Cache-Control: max-age=603241
Expires: Mon, 14 Apr 2014 16:48:38 GMT
Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 17:04:37 GMT
X-Cache: TCP_MEM_HIT from b128-48-122- 38.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com (AkamaiGHost/6.15.0.3-12528292) (-)
X-Cache-Key: /L/16428/676192/4j/orign-example.com/KMK/ samplepicture.gif?348531
Connection: keep-alive
  5. Use the table below to interpret the results:
Did the page load as expected? Is the X-Cache entry present? Result
Yes Yes Success! You’re ready to test.
No Yes You reached an Edge server, but something isn’t working. The value of the X-Cache entry might help you identify the problem.
Yes No You reached the Origin Server, not the Edge Server. Check the entry you added to your hosts file.
No No You have not reached either the Edge or your Origin Server. Check the entry you added to your hosts file.