Cloud CDN release notes

Global Front End is a unified offering that simplifies billing by consolidating pricing across networking products, including Cloud CDN, global external Application Load Balancer, Google Cloud Armor, and Service Extensions, into one solution to help deliver, scale, and secure your internet-facing applications. Cloud CDN is included in the Global Front End Enterprise billing tier. This feature is available in Preview.

For more information, see Global Front End.

Cloud CDN supports the targeted CDN-Cache-Control HTTP response header RFC 9213. You can use this header to specify caching directives specifically for Cloud CDN edge caches without affecting browser-level caching.

For details, see Cache control header precedence.

Cloud CDN supports native image optimization at the Google network edge for global external Application Load Balancers. This feature offloads compute-intensive image transformations, such as resizing, cropping, and format conversion to reduce origin server load and egress costs. This feature is in Preview.

For more information, see Optimize images with Cloud CDN.

Cloud CDN and external Application Load Balancers support self-service Private Bucket Access for Cloud Storage buckets. This feature allows you to securely serve content without making your storage buckets public. The access on the buckets is managed securely via IAM permissions on a Google-managed service account. This feature is Generally Available.

For more information, see Private bucket access.

For global external Application Load Balancers, you can configure Cloud CDN cache policies at various levels of a URL map, providing more granular control over caching. You can now apply specific caching logic based on hostnames, URL paths, HTTP headers, and query parameters. This feature is Generally Available.

For more information, see Cache policies in URL maps.

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Gateway supports Cloud CDN to help you cache content closer to your users, improve application latency, and reduce origin load. Using GKE Gateway APIs, you can configure, manage, and fine-tune caching configurations for different segments of your traffic. This feature is Generally Available.

For more information, see Configure Cloud CDN for Gateway.

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Gateway supports Cloud CDN to help you cache content closer to your users, improve application latency, and reduce origin load. Using GKE Gateway APIs, you can configure, manage, and fine-tune caching configurations for different segments of your traffic. This feature is in Preview.

For more information, see Configure Cloud CDN for Gateway.

For global external Application Load Balancers, you can configure Cloud CDN cache policies at various levels of a URL map, providing more granular control over caching. You can now apply specific caching logic based on hostnames, URL paths, HTTP headers, and query parameters. This feature is in Preview.

For more information, see Cache policies in URL maps.

Cloud CDN lets you add custom code to the request processing path of global external Application Load Balancers by using Service Extensions edge extensions (pre-cache) and traffic extensions (post-cache). These extensions help you manipulate request headers early in the processing lifecycle to influence caching and routing decisions. This feature is in General Availability.

Cloud CDN provides predefined dashboards that are enabled by default for a quick insight into system health and performance. These dashboards display key metrics that enable you to monitor traffic distribution and cache effectiveness without manual configuration. This feature is Generally Available.

For more information, see Predefined dashboards.

Cloud CDN lets you add custom code to the request processing path of global external Application Load Balancers by using Service Extensions edge extensions. These extensions help you implement customizations in the request path pre-cache, which can influence how content is cached and the backend service is selected on the Application Load Balancer. This feature is in Preview.

For more information, see Use Service Extensions for edge computing.

Cloud CDN supports content targeting, which helps you cache and deliver assets that are customized for your end-user contexts. It enables device characterization and geo-targeting, which are useful for implementing responsive websites, language customization, and currency settings. This feature is now Generally Available.

Invalidation using cache tags is Generally Available.

Cloud CDN now also offers faster performance and higher rate limits for invalidation requests using all invalidation matchers. For more information, see Cache validation overview.

External HTTP(S) Load Balancing and Cloud CDN support early data for TLS 1.3, also known as 0-RTT or zero round trip. Early data helps clients include HTTP request data with a TLS handshake, which can improve web performance for resumed connections.

Cloud CDN supports invalidation by using cache tags with faster performance and higher rate limits in Preview. By grouping objects together using cache tags, you can remove and refresh content at scale.

You can also use the Google Cloud Console to enable private origin authentication for Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and compatible object stores.

The Cloud CDN private origin authentication capability for Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and compatible object stores is now Generally Available.

The advanced traffic management using flexible pattern matching capability with Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is now Generally Available.

Cloud CDN supports advanced traffic management using flexible pattern matching with Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer. This capability allows you to use wildcards anywhere in your path matcher and customize origin routing for different types of traffic and request and response behaviors. In addition, you can use results from your pattern matching to rewrite the path that's sent to the origin. This feature is in Preview.

Cloud CDN supports private origin authentication for Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and compatible object stores. This capability improves security by allowing only trusted connections to access the content on your private origins and preventing users from directly accessing it. This feature is supported in Preview.

Cloud CDN support for dynamic compression is now Generally Available. Cloud CDN supports dynamic compression using Brotli and gzip algorithms, which can reduce data sent over the network by 60-80% for compressible content. Enabling dynamic compression can help you achieve faster page load times, speed up playback speed for video content, and optimize egress costs. For more information, see Dynamic Compression.

Dynamic compression allows Cloud CDN to automatically compress responses as they are being served between the origin and the client. The size of the data sent over the network is reduced by 60% to 85% in typical cases. This feature is supported in Preview.

Cloud CDN support for custom named cookies and headers in the cache key are Generally Available. You can use these features for A/B (multivariate) testing, canary testing, and similar scenarios. Allowlisting of query parameters is now also enabled for backend buckets, to allow for cache busting.

For details, see the caching documentation.

Cloud CDN now supports custom named cookies and headers in the cache key, to enable A/B (multivariate) testing, canarying, and similar scenarios. Allowlisting of query parameters is now also enabled for backend buckets, to allow for cache busting. These features are available in Preview.

For details, see the caching documentation.

Cloud CDN now treats HTTP responses with a max-age or s-maxage directive as cacheable, even if those responses do not have a Cache-Control: public directive.

This allows Cloud CDN to cache additional responses and better align with HTTP standards.

For details, see the caching documentation.

External HTTP(S) Load Balancing and Cloud CDN now support HTTP/3. HTTP/3 is based on the IETF QUIC transport protocol. Compared to HTTP/2, it reduces request latency, improves throughput, and mitigates head-of-line blocking. HTTP/3 is already supported on most major web browsers.

To learn how to enable HTTP/3 on your external HTTP(S) load balancer, visit the documentation.

Serve stale, bypassing cache, and negative caching are now Generally Available.

These features are available when configuring Cloud CDN enabled backend services and backend buckets in the Cloud Console, in addition to the gcloud SDK and REST API.

Cloud CDN now supports configuring negative caching for HTTP 302 (Found) and HTTP 307 (Temporary Redirect) status codes.

To learn how to enable negative caching for these status codes, visit the documentation.

Cloud CDN now treats HTTP responses with a valid, future date in the Expires header as cacheable, even if those responses do not have a Cache-Control: public directive.

This will allow Cloud CDN to cache additional responses and better align with HTTP standards.

Review the caching documentation for details on what content Cloud CDN considers cacheable vs. uncacheable.

Cloud CDN now treats the no-cache Cache-Control directive in a response as per RFC 7234 and allows these responses to be cached, provided that they are validated every time before being reused.

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