You set up a delivery configuration, or property, to determine how your site or app will be delivered to requesting clients. We'll use ​Akamai​'s Ion product and the Property Manager Editor to do this.

Before you begin

You'll need some things before you can create your property:

• Your contract and primary group. When you set up identity and access, you worked with your ​Akamai​ account team to set up your contract and primary group.

• The domain you set in your certificate. When you set up your secure certificate, you provided a domain to serve as your common name (CN). You'll need this exact value. Also, if you added any other domains to your certificate as subject alternative names (SANs), you'll need them, too.

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Wait for your certificate to finish

If your certificate hasn't gone through all of the phases for completion, you should wait until it does. The person you set as your certificate administrator will get a confirmation email when it's ready to go.

1. Create a new Ion property

1. Access ​Akamai Control Center​.

2. Login using your primary admin user.

3. Select + Create > Property.

4. Based on your version of Ion, Premier or Standard, click Create Property in the applicable card. The Setup Ion {version} window is revealed.

5. Click Property Manager.

6. Enter a Property name. This serves as the filename for the property and how it's displayed throughout Property Manager.

7. Select the Contract and primary Group you set up for identity and access.

8. Click Next.

2. Create an edge hostname

Here, we'll create the hostname that's used to redirect requests for your site or app to ​Akamai​ edge servers.

What's an edge hostname?

You provide us with a domain that your customers use to access your site or app and ​Akamai​ appends a specific domain to it. Here's an example:

​Akamai​ takes the certificate you created and applies it to the edge hostname to secure it. Later, you'll need to update your existing DNS record for your site or app to be a CNAME record that points to the edge hostname. As a result, a client request to your domain is rerouted to the edge hostname and securely sent to an optimal ​Akamai​ edge server, where your property is read.

Add a new edge hostname

1. In the Property Version Information panel, ensure that Standard TLS ready is selected.

2. In the Property Hostnames panel click + Hostnames and select Add Hostname(s).

3. In Add Hostname(s), enter a name for your Property Hostname and click Next.

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For easier recognition, input the actual domain here. This is just a name for the entry in your Ion property. So, it can be any value.

4. Select IPv4 + IPv6 (dual stack) and click Next.

5. Select No cert/Other cert Standard TLS and click Next.

6. In the resulting table, click . The Associate Edge Hostname to Property Hostname window appears.

7. Click Create.

8. Click the Edge Hostname field and enter the domain name you set as the CN in your cert, then click the associated drop-down and select edgesuite.net.

9. Click Update. Your new edge hostname is added.

10. Review the settings for the new edge hostname and click Submit when you're done.

11. If you set up other domains as SANs in your certificate, repeat this process for each one.

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Your edge hostname will be secure

A property hostname entry displays "No certificate (HTTP Only)" in the Certificate column at this phase. This will change once you activate your property on the staging network. After activation, the secure certificate you created will sync with your edge hostname.

3. Set NetStorage as your origin

Now, add your NetStorage storage group to serve as your origin.

Before you begin

While you were setting up your origin server in NetStorage, there were two values you should have noted:

• Your storage group name
• A Content Provider (CP) code for your upload directory

Set up the Origin Server behavior

Apply some settings to set up NetStorage as the origin. We're using the Origin Server behavior in the Default Rule so that NetStorage is the origin for all requests.

1. In the Property Configuration Settings panel, click the Default Rule.

2. In the Origin Server behavior, set Origin Type to NetStorage.

3. Click NetStorage Account and select the appropriate storage group based on the values you noted when you created the storage group:

   • The Storage Group Name.
   • The CP code assigned to the Upload Directory

4. Set rules and behaviors

You can configure other rules in the Property Configuration Settings to optimize the delivery of your site. Ion automatically includes several sub-rules and behaviors in the Default Rule that are preset to help with this. Here, we'll cover some that you should specifically set up for your property.

Set up your CP code

You need to add one to your Ion property to track the delivery of your website or app through the ​Akamai​ edge network. This CP code will also let you generate reports for the content you deliver with this property.

1. Open the Augment insights sub-rule in the Default Rule.

2. Click the Traffic reporting child rule to open it.

3. You should have had at least one CP code for Ion set up when you originally worked with your account team. Click the Content Provider Code field and select it.

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This is not the same CP code you used with NetStorage.

Enable mPulse RUM

mPulse is a real user monitoring (RUM) solution that collects and analyzes detailed information about your users' experience whenever they visit your site or app. It's used with other Ion features to help accelerate delivery. So, we want to make sure it's enabled.

1. Open the Augment insights sub-rule in the Default Rule.

2. Click the mPulse RUM child rule to open it.

3. Ensure the Enable is set to On.

4. Leave all other options set at their default.

Want to know more about mPulse? Check out the Ion user documentation.

Enable Adaptive Acceleration

Adaptive Acceleration improves HTML page load performance by prepositioning content. It uses ​Akamai​​'s learning engine that's powered by real user data gathered via mPulse. It provides site acceleration and can incrementally improve the rendering process by up to 5%.

1. Open the Accelerate delivery sub-rule in the Default Rule.

2. Click the Adaptive acceleration child rule to open it.

3. Set the following options and leave all others at their default:

   • Beacon Data Source. Select mPulse.
   • Automatic Server Push, Automatic Preconnect, and Automatic Font Preload. Set these to On.

For more on Adaptive Acceleration, take a look at its tutorial in the Ion user documentation.

Enable Caching

Caching your website content on edge servers makes it closer to end users to help speed up delivery. You should add some form of caching to your Ion property.

1. Select the Offload origin sub-rule in the Default Rule.

2. Set the Caching option to Cache and set Maxage to at least 10 minutes. This gives NetStorage enough time to index and access your content if it changes.

3. Scroll down to the Cache HTTP Error Responses behavior. Set Enabled to On and set Max-age to 30 seconds. This gives NetStorage enough time to address and log errors.

4. In the Cache Key Query Parameters, set it to Exclude all parameters. NetStorage doesn't honor query strings.

5. Select the HTML pages child rule. Set options here to duplicate your other Caching settings:

   • Caching. Set Caching option to Cache and Maxage to at least 10 minutes.
   • Cache Key Query Parameters. Set Behavior to Exclude all parameters.

Remove Chase Redirects

This behavior lets edge servers follow redirect responses from your origin server in order to serve the proper response to a requesting client. Chase Redirects is default included when you're using ​Akamai​ NetStorage as your origin server.

The Chase Redirects behavior is also included by default in a new Ion property. Remove it to avoid potential conflicts:

1. In the Offload origin sub-rule, select its Redirects child rule.
2. Remove the Chase Redirects behavior by clicking Remove behavior ().

Disable SureRoute

SureRoute optimizes the connection between edge servers and an origin server, specifically for non-cacheable content. Since we're using NetStorage as your origin, and we want to cache content, SureRoute doesn't apply.

1. Open the Accelerate delivery sub-rule in the Default Rule.

2. Click the Protocol optimizations child rule to open it.

3. In the SureRoute behavior, set Enable to Off.

Add Auto Domain Validation (recommended)

Earlier, you set up a domain-validated certificate to protect the connection between a requesting client and the ​Akamai​ edge network via HTTPS. This certificate has a lifecycle of 90 days. After which, you need to renew it. You can add Auto Domain Validation to your Ion property to automate this renewal.

1. Select the Default Rule in your Ion property.

2. click Add Behavior.

3. In Search available behaviors, type auto to filter results and select Auto Domain Validation from the list.

4. Click Insert Behavior.

The behavior is added to your Default Rule. You don't need to set anything. Just including the behavior enables it. It applies to all of the edge hostnames you've set in your Ion property that use a Standard TLS, domain-validated certificate. The renewal process will automatically start 16 days before their 90 lifecycle ends.

What about the other rules?

Leave all other rules and behaviors at their default settings. A new Ion property includes several that are preset as a best practice, and others are optional. You don't need to change any of them now. You can always create a new version of your property later and make changes.

For complete details on all of these rules and behaviors, take a look at Define property configuration settings in the Ion user documentation.

Save your Ion property

With all recommended settings applied, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.