41–50 of 63 posts
I am not sure what the added benefit is (apart from the looks of using your own domain) when using your own custom SSL? Isn't the standard https connection through Cloudfronts wildcard SSL https://somethingsomething.cloudfront.net enough to be on the safe side? Really curious.
Prospective Rackspace customers - Avoid the cloudfiles offering from Rackspace at all costs. Their support is good, but we used to average out atleast one user who were getting access denied to store their files on Cloudfiles (We're kind of a file upload service in the most basic context). Switching in progress (to S3) and so far so good. I guess you get what you pay for, after all.
I've been extremely happy with CloudFlare. 4chan probably wouldn't be around today without them. CF has helped us by mitigating every DDoS since we started with them two years ago, and have kept operating costs in check by offering flat pricing. Even at their highest tier (Enterprise), we're saving money versus what we'd be spending with our colo.
We switched from Cloudfront to Fastly and couldn't be happier. These guys are awesome and the product is top notch. I highly recommend Fastly. We weren't too impressed with Cloudfront. The performance was all over the place and they provide no insight for cache hits/misses.
On price Fastly has copied every CloudFront price to the cent. I seems they differentiate on statistics and rapid purging (their purported competitive edge). However, for most any application, with proper version naming of resources, purges should not be an issue, unless you've got hard coded references to those resources.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand this. You have so much traffic that you need CloudFront, but cannot earn enough to spare $600/mo? What kind of startup is it? From what I could tell talking with some people so far, is that they only think they need CDN, while a couple of regular dedicated servers would be just fine. But, then again, most of my customers are in Europe so I can serve files cheaply. In US, I'm currently using FDCServ…
The reason we're using a CDN is not because of the traffic - that would be easily solved with an AWS server and a lightweight http server such as nginx. We decided to go with a CDN because of two reasons: 1) The website and web app should load fast all over the world. Not only in the US or Sweden (where we live). 2) We don't want to host or put any time into hosting or own website and static files. We rather pay a li…
But purely in terms of speed, Akamai Rules. Closely Followed by ( and sometimes even exceed ) EdgeCast.
From my experience, MaxCDN is the next bet since they are from NetDNA. Not saying CloudFront, or Other OnApp based CDN not good, for large files transfer or video streaming they are perfectly fine. But for small files, fast response and low latency those three are the way to go.
Haven't tested Fastly yet purely because i think they are very expensive against some other established players. And I guess they have far few PoPs. Would love to see some detailed comparison though.
In my opinion this article skipped two of the best CDN's around, Edgecast and Highwinds. Edgecast in particular is damn fast (ssd boxes, high ram, most stuff served from memory). We're running multiple SSL'd domains through them without issue. Highwinds is more of an up and comer, but they have amazing service (as long as you avoid using them in South America).
The reason I avoid Cloudfront (AWS) is that it's way to expensive. I avoid CloudFlare because of the interactions I've had with their security team and CEO.
MaxCDN is good as long as you have no plans to go global. Let me be very explicit about this- if your CDN doesn't have a POP in Australia then they're not ready for prime time. There are only a few fiber lines going into the country and performance is absolute crap if you aren't hosting your files there. They also have nothing in South America, the MidEast or Africa.
As a seperate note, most DNS management companies will offer DNS based "CDN Managers", which will allow you to set priority rules for each CDN by region. This is an amazing tool that allows you to really take control of your traffic. I've never seen a CDN that was perfect everywhere, and when you have to deal with things like China (who don't really allow external CDN's in, forcing you to use one of theirs or host traffic out of Hong Kong) it's a life saver. I know that Edgecast, Dyn and UltraDNS offer these types of services (with the Edgecast one being the cheapest by far).