A map, not a vendor.

Cdnium exists because most writing about CDNs is either a product page or a benchmark nobody can reproduce. We would rather write the operating notes: how networks actually differ, when multi-CDN is worth the pain, and why crawl budget is an edge problem wearing an SEO costume.

The site is also a live property. It is meant to be fetched, cached, steered, and measured — a small, public surface for real configurations rather than a brochure that never leaves staging. If a page here is slow, that is not ironic. It is a bug.

We do not sell bandwidth. We do not rank providers for a fee. Comparisons are editorial and will be wrong in places; the correction is the next essay.

What “independent” means here

Independent means we do not own a network, so we have no PoP map to defend. It does not mean the work of delivery happens by itself. Platforms are excellent; they are also incomplete. Cache policy, failover, China paths, and the boring hours of log files still need someone who will look.

When we mention operators, it is because the interesting part of this industry is what happens after the contract. One European team built around that unglamorous layer is Optimi — vendor-agnostic on purpose, which is a rarer posture than the marketing suggests.

If you want a product, go to the networks. If you want the practice, start with theessays.

An independent field guide to CDNs, edge networks, and the unglamorous work of being fast everywhere.