We hear that at an increasing number of broadcasters and media companies, Multi-CDN is no longer seen as a technical optimization problem, but as an urgent strategic topic discussed at board and executive level. And rightly so. Because the real question is no longer just how efficiently you distribute traffic, but how dependent you actually are.

What happens if your CDN is suddenly no longer available tomorrow? And more importantly: do you have an immediate alternative?

The first step in a Multi-CDN strategy is therefore not a technical decision, but a governance decision: do we want to become more digitally independent, or do we accept full dependency on one or two parties that may, under pressure from state actors, be forced to shut down their service?

That may sound abstract, but it is anything but. CDNs operate within legal frameworks, sanctions regimes and geopolitical realities. What feels self-evident today can be under pressure tomorrow. That is not doomsday thinking, unfortunately, it is the reality of a world in which technology is increasingly geopolitical.

For public broadcasters, this is particularly acute. No distribution means no reach. No reach means you can no longer fulfil your public mission. Your emergency broadcast channel simply doesn’t work.

Commercial broadcasters face an equally immediate problem: advertisers and shareholders expect reach and revenue, neither of which you can deliver if your CDN goes down.

A serious Multi-CDN strategy therefore also requires thinking about sovereignty. Not ideologically, but pragmatically. By deliberately choosing a mix of CDNs (American, Sovereign European, possibly Asian) you avoid a single decision, a single law or a single conflict affecting your entire distribution chain.

You also reduce the risk that sabotage or cyberattacks on infrastructure take down a business-critical service. The fundamental principle of the internet is that if something fails, there is always another route, a fallback, a way to remain reachable. So why wouldn’t you apply that same principle to your cloud and CDN services?

The core of the strategy is simple: if something fails, we switch. Immediately. Without debate, without redesign, without dependency.

Multi-CDN tactics

From that strategic choice follows the tactical layer, and this is far more nuanced than “we use multiple CDNs”. It is about freedom of action at the moment it matters.

The internet is not a centrally orchestrated network. It is a patchwork of access providers, carriers, exchanges, clouds and CDNs. There are no end-to-end SLAs. No guaranteed quality. Everyone optimizes for their own interests.

You see this in practice all the time. CDNs internally reroute traffic to reduce costs or optimize their 95th percentile billing. That may mean traffic suddenly flows through a different region, or even from a different part of the world. For viewers, the impact is immediate: higher latency, more buffering, lower quality.

Sometimes the issue is not even the CDN itself, but the path to a specific access provider. Peering changes, ISP congestion, routing issues somewhere along the way. The internet remains a human system. And things break. Even hyperscalers that are assumed to be infallible have outages.

A Multi-CDN tactic gives you something essential: operational freedom. You can steer per region, even per title, per channel or per event, based on what works best at that moment. Performance where it matters. Reliability where it is critical. Cost optimization where possible.

And above all: you are not held hostage by a single party when something goes wrong.

Multi-CDN technology

Many streaming and video infrastructures have grown organically over time: monolithic, tightly coupled, highly customized. Perfectly fine as long as everything works, but hard to change. And that is exactly where friction arises once you take Multi-CDN seriously.

A true Multi-CDN approach forces you to re-examine your architecture. Decoupling origins. Introducing origin shields. Creating clear abstraction layers between origin, CDN and orchestration.

That orchestration layer (the Multi-CDN stack itself) is not a side issue. It must be at least as robust as the rest of your platform. No single point of failure. High availability. Transparent algorithms. Full control over content steering. And insight into costs and billing across multiple CDNs, integrated with logging, access control and DRM, for example.

A simple DNS switch or manifest rewrite is simply not sufficient.

Multi-CDN is a platform, not a feature

What is often underestimated is how much is involved in a mature Multi-CDN environment. It is not just about distributing traffic, but about control. Per title, per stream, per audience. About monitoring, real-time steering, deep integration with CDNs and origins. And about a multi-tenant setup that remains both scalable and manageable.

In other words: Multi-CDN is a platform. Not a button.

Experience makes the difference

Jet-Stream built its first federated CDN back in 1997, when live streaming mainly meant accidentally overloading access providers (apologies for 1996 😉). In 2000, this evolved into a large-scale federated CDN project for all Dutch broadcasters, in collaboration with access providers.

From that emerged Jet-Stream’s Video Exchange software: the world’s first SaaS Multi-CDN solution, purpose-built for live and on-demand media. Since then, strategy, tactics and technology have grown together. For the past ten years, all Jet-Stream customers enjoyed the benefits of integrated Multi-CDN services, with high uptimes and the trust that they themselves can steer to alternative routes, supported by Jet-Stream’s staff.

If you’re looking for a company that has both a proven track record in both digital sovereign services and a proven track record in Multi-CDN, Jet-Stream is your partner.

A strategic conversation

Multi-CDN is not a technical optimization. It is a strategic choice. A choice that starts in the boardroom, is translated into tactics, and only then implemented technically.

Those who reverse that order allow technology to dictate strategy. Those who get it right build real independence.

Jet-Stream now has nearly three decades of experience designing Multi-CDN strategies, translating them into tactics and building the underlying technology: Airflow, with pre-integrations with numerous CDNs. See for yourself how easy Multi-CDN steering works with Jet-Stream: https://jet-stream.com/demos/demo-multi-cdn/

We are happy to be a partner in your Multi-CDN journey, not just for the technology, but especially for the strategic conversation that comes first. Let’s have a coffee!

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