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Google CDN Beta is already one of the fastest CDNs

blog.speedchecker.xyz

41–50 of 110 posts

Re: Google CDN Beta is already one of the fastest CDNs

#43

> Cloud CDN is Google’s own CDN solution for sites running in VMs inside Compute Engine. It is designed and implemented a bit differently from other CDNs, since it is meant to cache not only static content, but practically a whole site in more than 50 edge caches globally. I'm not seeing what's so special here. Other CDNs can do whole-site acceleration and caching (Akamai Sureroute, EdgeCast ADN). > It is a whole new…

Google Cloud CDN is 'just' a dynamic site accelerator (with nice GCP integration), like all other CDNs. I think the author of this blog post is trying to simplify the explanation (or just doesn't understand). No 'copy' of your site is running on the closest location. GCE is not available in all POPs. These results would look very different if EC ADN was included. And not including CloudFlare is a bit strange. Both EC…

Cloudflare has interconnect with google:

https://www.cloudflare.com/google/

Re: Google CDN Beta is already one of the fastest CDNs

#44
post #33
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the OP, but I'm not sure why they included MaxCDN and Fastly but not (at least) CloudFlare's free service. Disclosure: I work on Compute Engine (though I had nothing to do with this service).

OP here: You are right, CloudFlare would have been nice and in retrospect we should have added it. I think it would have fared quite nicely as during all the tests we do on regular basis its doing really well.

Irony = their site is on CF.

  $ whois speedchecker.xyz
  Domain Name: SPEEDCHECKER.XYZ
  Name Server: LEE.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
  Name Server: PAM.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM

Re: Google CDN Beta is already one of the fastest CDNs

#45

Question: How do cdns serve/shard data ? Meaning, in a pop, there are say 100 nodes, and all of them cache some data, say by hashing the path /ayb.jpg. Does the loadbalancer (say, haproxy) know which node should-have the file cached ? Or there is random loadbalancing and each node get's the data from the other nodes (using the same hash)? Just like openstack-swift (there are proxy that serve http-requests, and data n…

Probably each CDN does it differently... but the one I know about does the second.... so it goes LB, first webserver on random node, and that first webserver knows where to grab the content from the second webserver on the proper node that has the content.

Most CDN have a pile of patents that show how they do their cache hierarchy.

-Ex CDN worker

Re: Google CDN Beta is already one of the fastest CDNs

#46
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We deeply understand" - the worst thing I want to hear from a CDN. I want full control like Fastly allows me to use my own VCLs. "Deep understanding" is not something that I find as a plus as I read it as "we assume a lot of things (wrongly)". "Full control", "cache tags", "wildcard/tag purging", "sub-minute purges", etc. - these are the things I want from a CDN. I don't want another CloudFront!

The "deep understanding" is from a networking POV... They're not trying to do those niche features (yet?). They're just trying to improve site perf for anyone using HTTP LB's on GCP already. You check a single box and your content is magically served from (or terminated on) a crazy number of POPs with zero configuration.

What "deep understanding" when it works with VMs within GCE only?! This is a marketing description, not a technical one. The features I mentioned are not "niche", they are basic among CDNs and both Google and AWS seem to offer the worse and totally impractical CDNs. Honestly, if Google Cloud offers a CDN comparable with Fastly, I may consider a move, but for a CloudFront copycat (well, a copycat of Gen. 1) - thanks, but no thanks! In general, this once again proves that Google Cloud is not a viable alternative, it's only been playing a catch-up game, it doesn't deliver pleasant surprises, and that AWS is the way to go. Okay, true, HTTP/2 is the only missing feature, but I'm sure Amazon is gonna deliver this anytime.

Re: Google CDN Beta is already one of the fastest CDNs

#49
post #30
post #7

I can make a fast CDN too, if it doesn't have any users yet!

I was going to say that :) When you are starting and have very few users, you should be fast. It is very hard to keep it very fast when you have millions of free users, like CloudFlare does. That is impressive.

I'd assume Google knows a thing or two about scaling content

Re: Google CDN Beta is already one of the fastest CDNs

#50
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here: You are right, CloudFlare would have been nice and in retrospect we should have added it. I think it would have fared quite nicely as during all the tests we do on regular basis its doing really well.

Irony = their site is on CF. $ whois speedchecker.xyz Domain Name: SPEEDCHECKER.XYZ Name Server: LEE.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM Name Server: PAM.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM

I think the OP just added CloudFlare when the site was overloaded earlier...
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