Get started with P3

To get started with the PhotonIQ Performance Proxy (P3), you need to configure your Akamai CDN and set up the optimization policy for your website using the P3 dashboard.

This guide walks you through using the P3 service.

Prerequisites

Before you start, ensure you have:

• An active Akamai account.
• Rights to edit and activate configurations on Akamai properties.
• A complete list of URLs for optimization.
• Access to the Macrometa P3 service, whitelisted on your origin servers.
• Access to Global Traffic Management (GTM) or an Application Load Balancer.

High-level Steps

At the simplest level, there are steps to setting up P3:

1. Create a P3 policy: A P3 policy defines what optimizations are applied to a website. Sites with a similar structure can share a policy, for example, some sites might need light optimization, others might need aggressive optimization.
2. Configure Akamai to route traffic to the P3 servers.
3. Test the P3 page configuration
4. Validate and monitor the service.

Get Started with P3

As stated earlier, you need to set up a new policy in the P3 dashboard to tell P3 how to optimize your website. While this defines the optimization rules, P3 will not optimize your pages until you route traffic to the P3 server.

(Optional) Create PPM Job

A Performance Proxy Metrics (PPM) job logs your web vitals before and after P3 optimizations, which can help you track the performance of your P3 optimizations.

• Start by creating a PPM job before you begin.
• View the web vitals metrics before and after sites optimization.

Step 1: Create a Policy

A P3 policy is a set of optimization rules applied to one or more origin URLs defined when you create a P3 policy.

You can also view, edit, and delete these policies, refer to Manage P3 Policies.

Step 2: Get Started with P3 on Akamai CDN

This part of the guide demonstrates configuring Akamai CDN to direct web traffic through P3. You can do this in two ways:

• Using the Global Traffic Management (GTM)
• Without the GTM

With GTM

Step 1: Configure GTM

Using the GTM allows you to manage traffic distribution, either for routing all traffic to P3-optimized sites or for A/B testing to measure the impact of optimizations. Follow these steps to set it up:

1. Open the Akamai control panel and click on Global Traffic Management from the hamburger menu. If you haven't yet configured a domain, then follow Akamai's setup instructions.
2. Select the domain that you want to use for routing to P3, which opens its configuration page.
3. Click the Data Centers tab and add P3 as a Data Center. Enter the necessary details, including the location provided by P3. The system will autofill the geographical coordinates.
4. Navigate to the Properties tab, pick the property designated for P3 traffic, and click Traffic Distribution Targets.
5. Click Add New Target and choose the P3 data center.
6. Determine the data center weight to decide the traffic percentage directed to P3. Enable the target, enter the P3 server's handout CNAME, and save your changes.
7. Finish by activating these configurations.
8. (Optional) Add a CNAME record (e.g., p3Optimizations.macrometa.io) through Edge DNS or another domain manager to balance traffic between two servers.

Step 2: Select a Property to Optimize

Effectively routing your web traffic through P3 starts with selecting the appropriate property for optimization, ensuring the changes improve your site's performance.

1. Log in to the Akamai Control Console.
2. Click Properties from the CDN menu.
3. Click on the property you intend to optimize with P3. This action leads you to its detail page.
4. Choose the version you're editing, right-click on the actions tab and select Edit New Version.

Step 3: Create a New Rule

Create a new rule to direct traffic to P3:

1. In the Property Configuration Settings, click the Rules tab to add a new rule.
2. Name your rule, e,g, "Forward To P3 Server."
3. Click Insert Rule. If you previously configured a Conditional Origin Group, you might have to move your rule above or below it.
4. Click on the Forward To P3 Server rule. You will see two blank tabs on the right: Criteria and Behaviors.

Step 4: Configure Request Routing

Configure request routing in the Behaviors tab:

1. In the Behaviors tab of your rule, click to add a standard property behavior. A popup will open to search for Your Origin Server.

2. Select Insert Behavior and enter the following information in the fields:

   • Origin Type - Your origin server
   • Origin Server Hostname - The GTM property you set earlier
   • Forward Host Header - The origin hostname
   • Cache Key Hostname - The origin hostname
   • IPv6 Origin Support - IPv4-Only
   • Supports Gzip Compression - Yes
   • Send True Client IP Header - Yes
   • True Client IP Header Name - True-Client-IP
   • Allow Clients To Set True Client IP Header - No
   • Verification Settings - Choose Your Own
   • Use SNI TLS Extension - Yes
   • Match CN/SAN To - {{Origin Hostname}} {{Forward Host Header}} <GTM-Configured-Cname>

   The other settings in the Origin SSL Certificate Verification depend on your property certificate settings.

   • Port
     • HTTP Port - 80
     • HTTPS Port - 443
   • Caching - Click on +Behavior to add settings for caching P3 optimized pages - ideally matching cache setting of your origin server.
   • Content Provider Code - Click on +Behavior for adding the CP code. Creating a new CP code makes it easier to identify content being routed to P3 and purge content, monitor stats, and for Akatec to collect logs should the need arise.

3. Save the property and return to the Property Details page.

After configuring your property and rules, activate the changes in the staging environment to confirm their effectiveness. If successful, apply these settings in the production environment to optimize your traffic flow through P3.

Without GTM

If GTM isn't available, directly configure within your property's criteria with these steps:

1. Click on Match from the Criteria tab
2. Click Match All.
3. Select the path and give the value of the path for which you are want to use P3.
4. Click Match to add one more check. This check will be for Percentage of Clients.
   • Give the value as 50 to divide the traffic 50/50, 100 to send all traffic to P3.
   • We recommend that you do this with the help of your Akamai Technical Partner.

Step 3: Validate that P3 is Optimizing Your Site

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We recommend testing P3 on the Akamai Staging network before activating the configuration on Akamai's Production network. This will allow you to test different levels of optimization while working with your Macrometa partners to fine-tune P3 settings.

You can use the cURL command or a mod header browser extension to test the paths you have configured for optimizing. If the response is coming from P3, the x-photoniq-p3 header wil be present.

For example, you could use a cURL command such as:

curl -I https://yourwebsite.com | grep 'x-photoniq-p3'

Apart from configuring and managing policies, the P3 dashboard also provides a number of tools monitoring the service:

• View P3 Metrics
• View P3 Validations
• View P3 Optimizations
• View P3 Alerts
• View P3 Audit Log

Step 4: Check Web Vitals for Your Optimized Site

If you previously created a PPM job to check web vitals before site optimization, you can view the web vitals metrics and compare the before and after stats.