Mobile App Acceleration and API Protection
Deliver your iOS and Android app’s API calls, media and install packages from the edge nearest each user. Faster cold starts, fewer timeouts on flaky mobile networks, and abuse stopped before it reaches your backend.
Get an app delivery plan- 3,000+Global edge nodes
- 60msAPI latency on CN2 routes
- 98%Asset and package hit ratio
Four things that slow mobile apps down
Mobile performance problems usually live in the network path, not the client code. A cold start fires a dozen serial calls, and every wasted round trip is multiplied by all of them.
Serial cold-start calls, seconds of blank screen
A launch chains remote config, token exchange, profile, home feed and ad slots. Add 150–300ms of DNS, handshake and round trip to each and the first screen takes two to three seconds — long enough for users to bounce.
Timeouts on weak mobile networks
During the commute peak, carrier handovers, tunnels and basements push packet loss up. TCP retransmits and fresh TLS handshakes stretch a single call into tens of seconds, and failures cluster exactly when usage is highest.
Slow overseas access and painful rollouts
Users abroad reach a single-region origin at 300ms+ RTT. On release day, tens or hundreds of megabytes go to millions of devices at once — origin bandwidth saturates and cross-border downloads keep restarting.
Reverse-engineered endpoints get farmed
Once the binary is unpacked and the signing scheme recovered, scripts call your signup, coupon and flash-sale endpoints directly. Acquisition budgets drain in minutes, and a client-side fix has to wait for the next release.
Six capabilities built for mobile
Static assets, binaries and uncacheable API traffic ride the same network, so the client only ever changes a hostname — no chaining vendors per resource type.
Dynamic acceleration for weak networks
Login, checkout and personalised feeds terminate at the nearest edge and travel to origin over pooled connections with TLS session reuse, removing repeat handshakes and cutting the cost of retransmits.
CN2 GIA direct routes
Direct interconnects with the three major Chinese carriers stay congestion-free at peak, holding API latency around 60ms for mainland China and Southeast Asia.
Local termination worldwide
3,000+ nodes across six continents, 300+ private interconnects and 14 Tier-1 transit providers keep requests from your overseas users off long international detours.
Package and hot-update delivery
Large binaries are chunked and resumable, pre-warmed per region before a release, with separate paths for store builds and staged rollouts. A 98% hit ratio keeps launch day off your origin.
Endpoint anti-abuse
Rate limits by IP, device and account, signature and timestamp validation against replay, and behavioural scoring that separates scripted farming from real users — rules ship instantly, no app release required.
DDoS scrubbing and origin shielding
Terabit-scale mitigation absorbs volumetric floods and high-frequency CC at the edge while your origin IP stays hidden, so the backend your app depends on stays reachable under attack.
Four steps to go live — one hostname change
Onboarding is non-invasive: staged rollout, full cutover and rollback are all a single DNS change.
Map your hostnames
List API, media and package or hot-update hostnames separately and mark which responses are cacheable.
Configure policies
Enable dynamic acceleration and anti-abuse on API hostnames, caching and large-file delivery on asset hostnames, then bind HTTPS certificates.
Roll out gradually
Point a subset of users or a single build at the accelerated endpoint by CNAME, confirm the metrics, then go full. Rollback is the same change in reverse.
Measure and tune
Track P95/P99 latency, timeout rate and hit ratio per endpoint, and adjust cache and rate-limit thresholds as traffic shifts.
Typical results after onboarding
Ranges observed across mobile app customers; actual results depend on how many calls a cold start makes, package size and where your users are.
- 40-60%Faster cold-start API time
- 70%Fewer weak-network timeouts
- 60%Lower release-day origin bandwidth
- 99.99%API availability
Mobile app acceleration FAQ
Yes, but first find out where the time goes. Instrument the cold start into five segments: DNS, TCP, TLS, time to first byte and transfer. If resolution and handshakes dominate, terminating at a nearby edge with connection pooling and TLS session reuse removes hundreds of milliseconds outright. If first-byte wait dominates, the bottleneck is origin processing and the calls need consolidating or parallelising. We provide per-endpoint segment reports so you can flatten the launch chain one call at a time.
Substantially. On lossy links, TCP retransmits and renewed TLS handshakes can stretch one call into tens of seconds. After onboarding, the client only connects to the closest edge node, so RTT drops from hundreds of milliseconds to tens and each retransmit costs far less. The edge-to-origin leg uses established pooled connections and is unaffected by the user’s radio conditions. We also recommend per-endpoint timeout tiers and a local fallback cache for config calls, so one failure never blanks the screen.
It costs far less than serving from origin. A package is the classic case of one file pulled repeatedly by a huge device fleet, so after the first fetch everything is served from cache. Three things help most: pre-warm the build to your main regions before release; enable chunking and resumable downloads so weak-network devices never restart from zero; and give store builds and staged-rollout builds separate paths for clean per-channel reporting. Release-day origin bandwidth typically drops by more than half.
The goal is to stop requests detouring back to a single region. With 3,000+ nodes across six continents, users abroad terminate locally: images and static assets are answered in-region, while dynamic API calls take our private backbone and 300+ direct interconnects back to origin. Cross-border RTT typically falls from 300ms+ to the low hundreds. Once an overseas market is material, the next step is caching read-only endpoints at the edge or placing a read replica in-region — we can advise based on where your users actually are.
Blocking at the edge is cheaper than blocking in your application. Combine four layers: tiered rate limits by IP, device and account on signup, coupon and flash-sale endpoints; signature plus timestamp validation to reject replayed requests; behavioural scoring that flags scripted patterns such as unnaturally regular intervals or a missing prior call chain; and a verification challenge rather than an outright block for borderline traffic, to protect genuine users. Rules take effect immediately, so you never wait on an app release.
Usually no code change is needed. As long as the app calls a hostname rather than a hard-coded IP, pointing that hostname’s CNAME at your accelerated endpoint moves every client — including versions already published — onto the new path with no store re-review. The one exception is SSL pinning: the pinned fingerprint must be updated, and we recommend pinning to the CA level and shipping that with your next release. Cutover and rollback are both a single DNS change, and a free 24-hour trial lets you validate first.
Still haven't found what you're looking for? Talk to our team.
Make your app open instantly, on any network
Share your cold-start endpoint list, package size and where your users are, and we will propose a configuration tuned for launch time, weak networks and abuse control.