Global CDN Delivery
AVCaption is built on Cloudflare R2 for object storage and the Cloudflare global CDN for delivery. That’s the same network behind 20% of the public internet — over 300 cities, low single-digit-millisecond latency to most populated regions, and battle-tested cache infrastructure.
How delivery works
- Upload — Your encoded HLS segments are written to a Cloudflare R2 bucket. R2 has zero egress fees to CF CDN edge.
- Pre-warm — On encode complete, AVCaption pings the master playlist + first segment from each major region, populating edge caches before the first viewer arrives.
- Viewer request — Player requests a segment URL. Cloudflare edge node receives the request.
- Cache hit — If the segment is cached at this edge (after the first viewer in this region fetched it), it’s served immediately. Sub-100ms TTFB.
- Cache miss — Edge fetches from R2 origin (also Cloudflare-internal — no internet hops). Caches the segment. Subsequent viewers in this region hit cache.
Why HLS segments cache so well
HLS segments are immutable — every segment has a unique URL based on its position and content. They never change. This means:
- Long cache TTL (months) is safe — content can’t go stale.
- Cache invalidation is rarely needed — uploads create new URLs, never overwrite.
- CDN cache hit rate is consistently >95% for popular videos.
This is fundamentally different from web pages, where caching gets complicated. Video segments are the easy case. (See CDN vs origin for why edge caching matters for streaming.)
Region coverage
Cloudflare CDN POPs are present in:
- North America — major US/CA cities, dense East/West coverage
- EU — every major capital plus Germany/France/UK/NL nodes
- APAC — Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Mumbai, Sydney, Jakarta
- South America — São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Lima
- Africa — Lagos, Johannesburg, Cairo, Nairobi
- Middle East — Dubai, Riyadh, Tel Aviv
Cold-start TTFB averages:
- North America / EU: 100-150ms
- East Asia: 150-200ms
- South America / Australia: 200-300ms
- Africa / Middle East: 250-400ms
Cache-tier priority
Paid tiers (Premium / Enterprise) write to the priority cache pool by default — segments stay resident at edge under the standard Cloudflare LRU eviction policy, with longer TTLs.
Free-tier videos share a lower-priority pool: they’re served from edge on cache hit, but the LRU policy evicts them sooner under cache pressure. When a free-tier video’s hit rate climbs above the promotion threshold (a sign of real audience demand), it’s promoted into the priority pool — so a free-tier video that goes viral still gets fast delivery once the pattern is detected.
There’s no manual configuration. The promotion is automatic; the eviction is just standard LRU behavior on the lower-priority pool.
Bandwidth cost
Bandwidth is included in every paid tier. There’s no per-GB delivery charge, no surprise bill if a video goes viral, no overage tier. The flat per-5TB price covers storage + bandwidth.
This is meaningfully different from minute-based or per-GB-delivered platforms (Mux, CF Stream, Bunny). Predictable cost is the whole point.
Compared to other CDN-backed platforms
- Cloudflare Stream — same CF infrastructure underneath. AVCaption layers encryption, custom player, AI subtitles, and flat pricing on top.
- Bunny CDN — Bunny’s own CDN (119+ POPs). Smaller footprint than Cloudflare’s but excellent in regions Bunny prioritizes.
- Mux — uses Fastly + their own delivery. Industry-leading QoE optimization, comparable region coverage.
Get started
Every video uses CF CDN automatically — no configuration needed. Upload a representative video and check the network tab from a few different geographic VPN exits; the TTFB difference tells you what your viewers in each region experience without you ever picking a region.