Best Practices And Case Studies For Overseas Acceleration Using Alibaba Cloud Singapore CN2

1.

Overview: Why choose Alibaba Cloud Singapore CN2 for overseas acceleration

- Alibaba Cloud's Singapore node directly connects to China Telecom's CN2 backbone, making cross-border links more stable.
- Compared to regular public networks, CN2 offers better routing strategies and fewer hops, with lower jitter and packet loss rates.
- For applications with two-way access between Southeast Asia and China mainland, it can significantly reduce one-way latency.
- Can build a layered acceleration architecture by integrating ECS, SLB, CEN, Express Connect, and CDN.
- Applicable scenarios: cross-border e-commerce, real-time gaming, real-time audio and video, enterprise intranet interconnection and API services.

2.

Key Points of Core Architecture and Component Selection

- Edge (Singapore) deployment: ECS serves as an access node + DDoS high-protection IP for initial protection.
- Return (China/other regions) to retain high-performance ECS (e.g., ecs.c6.xlarge or ecs.g6.large).
- Network interconnection: Use CEN or Express Connect for dedicated line interconnection to ensure bandwidth and stability of cross-border links.
- Load balancing: Use SLBs (public or intranet) for traffic distribution, combined with health checks to reduce the impact of failures.
- Caching and CDN: Drop static content to the CDN (enable recovery acceleration and node warm-up), reducing the burden on the original server.

3.

Example server configuration (real replicable).

- Singapore Exit Node (Access Layer): ecs.c6.large, 2 vCPU, 4 GB memory, default bandwidth 100 Mbps, can be increased to 500 Mbps on demand.
- China back-to-source host (business layer): ecs.c6.xlarge, 4 vCPU, 8 GB memory, bandwidth 200 Mbps (public network), and configured with 1 DDoS high-protection IP (protection bandwidth 50 Gbps).
- Dedicated lines/interconnects: Express Connect 10 Gbps dedicated lines or CEN links are rented to ensure peak connectivity and QoS.
- Storage and Caching: OSS is used for static resources, combined with CDN node caching (cache hit rate target ≥ 85%).
- Monitoring and Alerting: CloudMonitor + self-developed detection script, RTT/packet loss/HTTP 5xx alarm threshold settings.

4.

Performance comparison data (measured by real cases).

- Case Background: A cross-border e-commerce company originally connected directly to the public network. Singapore users visited the Shanghai data center in China with peak concurrency of 8k, and the business was product images + order API.
- Optimization measures: Launched CN2 access ECS in Singapore, enabled CDN + CEN backtracking, and added DDoS high-level protection.
- Testing method: Compare ping, packet loss, and concurrent throughput (AB or WRK) performance during peak periods, with 24-hour continuous sampling.
- Summary of results: The table below shows a comparison of core indicators before and after renovation.
modification). < td style="text-align:center;padding:6px;">1.2< td style="text-align:center;padding:6px;">0.08< td style="text-align:center;padding:6px;">650

indicator	before	after modification (CN2
average RTT(ms)	180	72
packet loss rate (%)
Peak throughput (Mbps)	120	320
page homepage (average, ms)	1500

5.

Security and DDoS Combat Recommendations

- Enable Alibaba Cloud DDoS high-protection packets or high-defense IPs, and reserve protection bandwidth based on business peak (for example, a peak of 300 Mbps, recommended protection of 5–10 ×).
- Enable connection control and SYN cookies at edge nodes to reduce the impact of TCP flooding on back-to-origin.
- Use WAF (Web Application Firewall) for application-layer filtering to block common crawlers and attacks.
- Layered Rate Limiting: SLB + backend rate limiting strategy to avoid sudden requests that could overwhelm the original server.
- Establish fault drill procedures, regularly conduct DDoS drills and link handover tests.

6.

Operation and maintenance optimization and cost control

- On-demand bandwidth and instance scaling: Automate scripts to preheat or boost additional ECS during traffic peaks.
- CDN caching strategy: Set long caches for static resources and enable hierarchical backsourcing to reduce the cost of backsourcing traffic.
- Mix pay-as-you-go and annual subscriptions, with long-term stable data options for annual subscriptions to save costs.
- Monitor cost center: Aggregate bandwidth/request/protection costs based on CloudMonitor, splitting bills by service.
- Select regions appropriately (such as Singapore's ap-southeast-1) and combine with partner networks to obtain better prices and link quality.

7.

Implementation steps and precautions

- Evaluate the link: First, test the differences between the current network and the route to Singapore versus China using traceroute/ping/iperf3.
- Small-scale grayscale: first import 10%-20% of traffic into CN2 nodes and observe for 48–72 hours.
- Metric alignment: Identify SLAs, including RTT, packet loss, page load time, and error rate targets.
- Rollback Solution: Retains the original public network routing and DNS rollback mechanism to quickly reverse changes.
- Documentation and permissions: Operations documentation, minimization of API keys and permissions, and proper change recording and communication.