Across 2025 and into 2026, high-profile disruptions, including major CDN outage events, such as the 2025 Cloudflare incident, have the power to take down streaming platforms, e-commerce giants and financial services, exposing the fragility of global digital infrastructure. These kinds of CDN outages shine a light on a systemic risk, that too many businesses put critical parts of their online delivery stack in the hands of a single content delivery network provider. When a major CDN service provider goes down, it can have a domino effect across all sorts of industries, costing organisations between $1M–$3M in lost revenue per hour, and impacting customer experience, revenue, brand trust, and ultimately making it difficult to stay operational. A single-CDN strategy is convenient, but it is not resilient. 

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In this article, we take a look at the risks of relying on a single CDN, the role of multi-CDN strategies in mitigating CDN outages, and how System73 helps broadcasters maintain stream continuity when traditional CDN infrastructure fails.

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Relying on a single CDN has become a critical risk

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For many content providers, working with a single CDN service provider still seems to be the simplest and most cost-effective approach. One contract, one operational model, and a unified toolset can be easier to manage than coordinating multiple vendors. But this simplicity introduces a serious weakness, which is that when that provider experiences a failure or large-scale traffic surge, there is no fallback. Recent CDN outage events have shown how quickly a single point of failure can cascade into widespread disruption, taking entire platforms such as ChatGPT o X offline in seconds and leading to hours of downtime.

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The risk is made greater by the fact that many companies rely on the same CDN service providers not only to deliver traffic, but also to measure performance. When delivery and observability are owned by a single provider, outages can be harder to diagnose in real time and slower to respond to. As streaming traffic grows more volatile and delivery chains become more interdependent, this lack of independent visibility makes single-CDN strategies even more fragile. In 2026, dependence on a single CDN is an operational vulnerability that can have direct consequences for uptime, audience trust and revenue.

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The case for a multi-CDN strategy

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A multi-CDN strategy is often framed as protection against CDN outage, but resilience is only part of the equation. Running traffic across multiple CDN service providers also unlocks performance, cost, and operational advantages that a single-provider setup cannot match. Different CDNs perform better in different regions, and a multi-CDN approach allows organizations to route users to the best-performing provider based on geography, network conditions, or content type. It also introduces competitive pressure, for example, when one provider underperforms or becomes too costly, traffic can be shifted elsewhere. 

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Ultimately, well-designed multi-CDN architecture restores control at critical moments. Think large-scale launches, traffic spikes in live events, or CDN failures… For all of this, content providers need a Plan B. With a multi-CDN strategy, redundancy is built in. Other solutions such as intelligent routing can reinforce a network’s resilience, responding in real time to latency or congestion, and offering teams a safety net when CDNs don’t perform according to plan. This also makes it possible to measure performance independently, exposing shortcomings from single providers and allowing teams to generate a much more reliable and comprehensive picture of traffic and delivery performance. 

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Beyond multi-CDN toward intelligent, AI-driven routing with System73

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While a multi-CDN strategy significantly reduces reliance on a single CDN service provider, it still takes for granted that traditional CDN infrastructure will be available when needed most. Large-scale live events, sudden traffic spikes and regional congestion are common factors that can easily overwhelm even well-distributed CDN setups, leaving content providers exposed despite having multiple vendors in place. But System73 takes a fundamentally different approach. Rather than simply adding more CDN service providers to the mix, System73 reduces dependency on CDN capacity altogether with our solutions Edge Intelligence and Edge Analytics.

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Edge Intelligence introduces an alternative delivery layer that operates alongside existing CDN infrastructure. Using centrally orchestrated peer-to-peer broadcast trees, it allows live streams to be delivered directly between end-user devices once sessions are established, offloading 50–70% of traffic (depending on the event in question) away from traditional CDNs. In the event of a CDN outage or regional failure, streams can continue to propagate through the network, even when edge servers are congested or unavailable. This model is particularly designed to support live and linear streaming, where unpredictability and scale make CDN-only strategies inherently fragile.

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Complementing this is Edge Analytics, providing independent, real-time visibility across the entire delivery chain and open internet. Instead of relying solely on reporting from CDN service providers, broadcasters gain insight into actual network conditions, congestion points, and performance at a granular level and in real time. This visibility allows teams to detect issues early, while Edge Intelligence dynamically adjusts routing to ensure streams are delivered over the least congested paths available. Edge Intelligence and Edge Analytics work together to provide control in an industry where CDN outages are not necessarily the exception, ensuring single infrastructure failures do not become a churn-inducing event.

For more information on live streaming solutions,Edge Intelligence, Edge Analytics, or to book a call with a member of our team, visit system73.com.