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Rolling your own CDN for $25 in 1 hour

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Re: Rolling your own CDN for $25 in 1 hour

#81
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CloudFlare uses AnyCast. We'll route any incoming requests to the nearest data center automatically. http://blog.cloudflare.com/a-brief-anycast-primer No additional configuration required. If you're referring to making different origin calls based on the geographic region -- such as when we go back to your origin for a request hitting our LAX data center if you happen to have an origin near LAX we'd use that origin s…

anycast does not route to the geographically nearest datacenter but the topologically nearest. anycast is great, but it isn't magic. I get it: you have marketing folks that probably specifically told you not to delve into the details but let's face it..."anycast routes it to the nearest datacenter automatically!" isn't completely true.

"anycast does not route to the geographically nearest datacenter but the topologically nearest."

That is correct, and as you point out in a later comment -- in roughly perhaps 85-90% the geographic route and the topological route will be identical and ideal. In the other 10-15% cases some additional network engineering can be done to work with a problem ISP to correct the less than ideal routing for a customer.

Re: Rolling your own CDN for $25 in 1 hour

#82
post #49
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anycast does not route to the geographically nearest datacenter but the topologically nearest. anycast is great, but it isn't magic. I get it: you have marketing folks that probably specifically told you not to delve into the details but let's face it..."anycast routes it to the nearest datacenter automatically!" isn't completely true.

Good point. In my testing of CF, I couldn't get my requests route to nearest datacenter though CF status page indicated green for datacenters near my request origin. It always routed me to SJC irrespective of which location the request originated from in US.

Something else was going on then. Did you have a ticket open with our support team by chance?

Re: Rolling your own CDN for $25 in 1 hour

#83
post #27

Nice. For tutorials like this it would be nice to see more details on the "how" of each step. For example: "We setup DNS info to point here (both NS1 and NS2..." That's great, but it would be nice to see: "Using the geodns web-based configuration tool, we setup DNS info to point here (both NS1 and NS2..." or "Running on , we setup DNS info to point here (both NS1 and NS2..." or "By editing /etc/ on the , we setup DNS…

I was planning to publish a post with literally the same title as this one later this week (annoying coincidence as I guess mine will now be largely ignored - maybe I should wait a few weeks to let this space calm down, I'm not sure) with some in-depth step-by-step explanation - so watch out for that :)

How would I go about getting a link for the site you are going to publish article to?

This article title piqued my interest but in the end it lack some key pieces of info I would need to try.

Re: Rolling your own CDN for $25 in 1 hour

#84
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was planning to publish a post with literally the same title as this one later this week (annoying coincidence as I guess mine will now be largely ignored - maybe I should wait a few weeks to let this space calm down, I'm not sure) with some in-depth step-by-step explanation - so watch out for that :)

How would I go about getting a link for the site you are going to publish article to? This article title piqued my interest but in the end it lack some key pieces of info I would need to try.

It'll be on my blog, reinterpretcast.com and I'll probably tweet about it from @_joesavage. I'll probably also post to HN and Reddit, but I'm not sure if it'll gain much traction since it's so similar in concept to this article here.

Re: Rolling your own CDN for $25 in 1 hour

#85
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would I go about getting a link for the site you are going to publish article to? This article title piqued my interest but in the end it lack some key pieces of info I would need to try.

It'll be on my blog, reinterpretcast.com and I'll probably tweet about it from @_joesavage. I'll probably also post to HN and Reddit, but I'm not sure if it'll gain much traction since it's so similar in concept to this article here.

It will, if its a detailed guide. This article, is an overview.

Re: Rolling your own CDN for $25 in 1 hour

#86
post #43

I'd recommend CloudFlare if you want AnyCast geo-DNS, and a free CDN. We don't charge for bandwidth or our DNS service. Disclosure: yes, I work at CloudFlare but the previous details are simply facts.

Hi, I heard that CloudFlare is now blocked in China, do you have more information?

CloudFlare is not blocked in China. A handful of IPs could be potentially, but if you're seeing something indicating that I'd recommend contacting our support team.

The GFC (Great Firewall of China) also changes daily (or sometimes hourly) so it's entirely possible whatever may have been an issue at one point in time has already been addressed.

Re: Rolling your own CDN for $25 in 1 hour

#87
post #52

This is similar to the process I used to build http://gcdn.org/ which I and a few clients + friends use on multiple projects. We used to use RR but GeoDNS has proven to be awesome and reliable. Full NS control makes it easier to do rolling upgrades or maintenance too. Excellent write up. More notes on GeoDNS http://edoceo.com/howto/geodns

This returns a 404-not found for me:

https://gcdn.org/jquery/1.8.0/jquery.js

Re: Rolling your own CDN for $25 in 1 hour

#88

I would highly recommend Varnish using S3 as a backend origin. Add to that a few 100TB.com dedicated server and you have an extremely cheap CDN with pretty decent bandwidth and minimal maintenance. CDNs have the advantage that they control more of the stack so can do more precise routing and have more edge nodes in more places. However, under the right circumstances, you can take the above quite far before a real CDN…

hey Daniel- thanks for the comment. Do you run any special varnish config settings w/ s3?

Nothing fancy right now. It's all static files. I think if I were doing caching of a dynamic application, some special settings would be far more valuable.

Re: Rolling your own CDN for $25 in 1 hour

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100TB.com specifically forbids using their service to create a CDN in their ToS[0]. 9. Acceptable Use/Illegal Activity d. We strive to maintain a high level of service, and a lot of customers depend on our high standards of quality. As such, we will not provide Services to those that are using our Services for: vii Using the Services for a content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN). An authorized…

people forget the story of simplecdn

Just looked this up. Thanks for the tip!

Re: Rolling your own CDN for $25 in 1 hour

#90
post #27

Nice. For tutorials like this it would be nice to see more details on the "how" of each step. For example: "We setup DNS info to point here (both NS1 and NS2..." That's great, but it would be nice to see: "Using the geodns web-based configuration tool, we setup DNS info to point here (both NS1 and NS2..." or "Running on , we setup DNS info to point here (both NS1 and NS2..." or "By editing /etc/ on the , we setup DNS…

This comment is a model of quality feedback. It shows appreciation, not just shallow bookending, and gives detailed improvement examples. I know this is off topic a bit, sorry.
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