Pull Zone Settings

The MaxCDN control panel lets you manage your Pull and Push zones right from your web browser. 

This article will break down the specific settings available for Managing your Pull Zones on MaxCDN. To access these settings, simply navigate as shown below in the Control Panel. 

1. Select Zones in the MaxCDN Control Portal
2. Select Pull Zones
3. Select the Action button for the desired Zone and select Manage to bring up the Zone
4. Select the Settings tab 

Custom Domain Settings

If you do not wish to deliver your assets over the CDN URL, and are pointing a custom subdomain to it via CNAME instead - you can define that here to ensure that the assets are delivered over your custom domain. 

Edge Settings

Settings that dictate how Edge Servers treat traffic as it comes through the CDN

1. GZip Compression
   
   
   1. This option needs to be enabled at all times, with the exception of if the origin server already has GZip turned on, or if your application requires GZip to be turned off.
2. Content Disposition
   
   
   1. This will set the Content-Disposition header for every file in this zone, forcing all files to behave as if the end-user chose the "save as" dialog.
3. Strip All Cookies
   
   
   1. This option is extremely useful as it tells the CDN to ignore all cookies (e.g. session cookies set by CloudFlare).
4. Pseudo Streamin
   
   
   1. This option needs to be enabled if you want to serve some media files (flv and mp4 ONLY with h.264 encoding) via your Pull Zone. Please note that first request to a non-cached big-size media file will be slow.
5. X-Forwarded-For (XFF)
   
   
   1. The X-Forwarded-For (XFF) HTTP header field is a de facto standard for identifying the originating IP address of a client connecting to a web server through an HTTP proxy (e.g. MaxCDN). Check out some use case examples.

Cache Settings

These settings define how your assets are cached and how they are treated once in cache on the CDN. 

1. Set Default Cache Time
   
   
   1. This option is meant to set a default expiry time/TTL in case the origin does not have one.
2. Override Cache-Control Header
   
   
   1. Should you require a longer TTL or to override the one set on the origin, this is the option for you.
3. Use Stale
   
   
   1. Serve expired content while retrieving updated content or when the origin server is no longer available. In other words, cached files on the CDN will be served even if the origin server is down. Use with extreme caution.
4. Query String
   
   
   1. When enabled, this option will treat each file with Query Strings (e.g. file.css?v=183791028301) as a separate cacheable file.
5. Ignore Cache Control
   
   
   1. Ignore any TTL/Expiry header set on the origin and instead use the settings in the Cache Settings tab.

Raw Log Storage

This option will allow you to store your logs to S3 bucket on regular basis.

1. Store Raw Logs in s3 Bucket
   
   
   1. Toggle the feature on or off by selecting Enable
2. Bucket Name
   
   
   1. The name of the bucket to be created for your logs
3. S3 Region
   
   
   1. The AWS Region in which your bucket is located
4. Prefix
   
   
   1. The S3 prefix for your log files
5. Period
   
   
   1. The period of time you would like each exported set of logs to cover
6. Format String
   
   
   1. These correlate to information that is logged in each request. You can include these in your format string to tailor your exported logs to the information that you need. 

You can use the following to create your format string:

bytes, cache_status, client_asn, client_city, client_continent, client_country, client_ip, client_latitude, client_longitude, client_state, hostname, method, pop, protocol, query_string, referer, scheme, status, time, uri, user_agent

Depending on the size of your browser window, you may need to scroll right to see all options in this list

Additional Settings

More Locations

This allows you to activate 5 additional PoP locations; Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney and Israel to better serve traffic in those regions.

Origin Shield

Allows you to set a fixed PoP location to handle Origin Pulls. 

Once set, this PoP will be the only one that connects to your server directly to fetch assets, and will effectively serve as the origin to the rest of the CDN. 

Origin Information

Allows you to manually define the IP behind which your Website or application is located. Note that this is best used when your server's IP is statically assigned and doesn't change. 

In the case that your origin server is behind a dynamic IP, or is a cluster of load-balanced servers with a virtual IP that is not static, this option should be disabled so that the CDN can perform Origin Pulls via a domain. 

Delete Zone 

Allows you to delete the current Pull Zone. 

Make sure you have removed any integration with the zone from your website before deleting. Failure to do so will result in downtime for your site. 

We hope this article was helpful. As always, If you have any questions or concerns about any of the topics mentioned in this article, please feel free to reach out to support - we are available 24/7 by chat or email!