Signal tiers
How m-cdn ranks its inputs by trust — CMCD > CDN logs > probes > DNS — and surfaces the confidence on every decision.
What it is
Not every signal is equally trustworthy. m-cdn ranks its inputs into tiers and weights decisions accordingly, from the highest-trust to the lowest:
1. CMCD — real player data (actual buffer, bitrate, throughput from viewers). 2. CDN logs — what the delivery network reports it served. 3. Synthetic probes — scheduled HTTP checks from multiple regions. 4. DNS demand — where viewers are resolving from (placement and demand only).
Why it matters
A decision made on real player telemetry deserves more confidence than one made on a synthetic probe alone. By tiering signals, m-cdn avoids over-reacting to thin data — and it can tell you which tier a given number came from, so you are never trusting a confident-looking figure that is really just a probe guess.
How m-cdn uses it
Each number in the console carries a confidence chip indicating its signal tier. The Decision Engine prefers higher tiers when they're available and falls back down the ladder when they're thin — probes and DNS exist mainly to fill gaps until real player data accumulates. DNS demand visibility is explicitly never treated as a quality signal.