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Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

blogs.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#81

Post by fireattack »

SaveTheRbtz wrote: post #71
phoenix24 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pretty cool. quick question, why not just make - https://github.debug or - https://debug.github.com

The main principle here is to reuse as less infra as possible: different dns provider, different hosting, different cert authority, etc. So, debug.github.com is probably worse, than github-debug.com (github.debug should be fine though, and even slightly better than github-debug.com)

Hi, I assume you're the writer or at least work at Dropbox.

Just want to let you know (as I mentioned somewhere): this blog link doesn't load at all if I click from here (i.e. with the refer of news.ycombinator.com).

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#82

Post by chaz6 »

SaveTheRbtz wrote: post #71
phoenix24 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pretty cool. quick question, why not just make - https://github.debug or - https://debug.github.com

The main principle here is to reuse as less infra as possible: different dns provider, different hosting, different cert authority, etc. So, debug.github.com is probably worse, than github-debug.com (github.debug should be fine though, and even slightly better than github-debug.com)

You could use two independent dns providers for the same domain (i call it inverse split horizon). I am a proponent of dns service discovery (using NAPTR and SRV records) so that by going to e.g. www.github.com, the dns provides a list of servers, and the final server would be your debug site (kind of like how there are MX records with different priorities, except naptr/srv is service agnostic).

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#84

Post by sitepodmatt »

fireattack wrote: post #67
hamandcheese wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, presumably being unable to clone is an important data point.

My point is chances are you can't visit https://github.com/contact to paste your debugging result, if you're "Having trouble connecting to github.com".

Ha good catch

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#85

Post by itgoon »

fireattack wrote: post #80
fireattack wrote: post #44

This page doesn't load here (totally blank). Other blog posts of Dropbox work fine.

I now noticed that if you click from here (i.e. with the refer of news.ycombinator.com), it won't load. No idea why though.

Hm. Yea, the content for the main page is requested and loaded, but none of the supporting content (CSS, images, etc.) is requested.

Copying the URL into another tab loaded the whole thing.

I don't really have time to dig into it further...

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#86

Post by wulfmann »

phoenix24 wrote: post #69
simonw wrote: post #22

TIL about https://github-debug.com/ and https://www.fastly-debug.com/ and https://dropbox-debug.com/ - neat pattern.

Is this open-source, how can I make one for my company?

Read the headers from the request to your service. Pull browser information from navigator (in a browser try: console.log(navigator)).

Should be most of the info.

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#87

Post by acdha »

gsich wrote: post #61
acdha wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just thinking that having used various FTP/SFTP-as-a-filesystem, not to mention NFS and SMB, over a decade or so before Dropbox arrived made the sales pitch immediately obvious: do you want everything to be slow and unreliable, with frequent jank even on fast networks, or not?

Well, SMB worked a decade ago and still does. Main difference is that it works better on local networks.

“Works” in the sense that the experience is acceptable but anyone who's used it knows that while things have gotten a little better over the years there are still a wide range of programs which handle latency by blocking. If you use a network home directory, you just get used to Outlook, Word, etc. sporadically hanging for a few seconds before the UI paints, etc.

That's going to be worse as a function of latency and packet loss so it's far more tolerable in an enterprise environment using wired networks with tons of bandwidth and, at least theoretically, a professional support team. Over WiFi or consumer-grade internet (i.e. probably a strong majority of Dropbox's customers) the gap in experience is going to be more substantial.

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#88

Post by gsich »

acdha wrote: post #87
gsich wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, SMB worked a decade ago and still does. Main difference is that it works better on local networks.

“Works” in the sense that the experience is acceptable but anyone who's used it knows that while things have gotten a little better over the years there are still a wide range of programs which handle latency by blocking. If you use a network home directory, you just get used to Outlook, Word, etc. sporadically hanging for a few seconds before the UI paints, etc. That's going to be worse as a function of latency and…

I am not sure if SMB is used over the Internet by "customers".

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#89

Post by jesseendahl »

blub wrote: post #66
meteor333 wrote: post #5

I'm surprised there is no mention of security or privacy. I'd have thought that's one of the reasons for controlling your own edge network.

Dropbox doesn't offer privacy. Anything done on the service is visible to them and whoever else convinces them to hand over the data. They're exactly the type of cloud service that shouldn't be used by businesses or privacy-conscious individuals. Security's also questionable. They had an incident where one could log into any account a long time ago. More recently they were presenting a fake admin dialog to syphon the…

Their security is very good nowadays. I suggest reading their security whitepaper and their blog posts on various security topics:

https://www.dropbox.com/static/business/resources/Security_W...

https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/tag/security-2/

Disclaimer: I used to work there on the Security Engineering team.

Re: Dropbox traffic infrastructure: Edge network

#90

Post by acdha »

gsich wrote: post #88
acdha wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Works” in the sense that the experience is acceptable but anyone who's used it knows that while things have gotten a little better over the years there are still a wide range of programs which handle latency by blocking. If you use a network home directory, you just get used to Outlook, Word, etc. sporadically hanging for a few seconds before the UI paints, etc. That's going to be worse as a function of latency and…

I am not sure if SMB is used over the Internet by "customers".

It's heavily used over VPNs. I have seen SMB over the internet by [ill-advised] companies but the various waves of exploits have probably put an end to that.

The main point was just that something like SMB or NFS is not a good fit for a network which is not extremely fast and highly reliable because too many programs do blocking I/O. Dropbox works really well in that situation because it's asynchronous and that advantage was huge when they came out because everything was even worse back in 2007.

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