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Finding the right CDN for our startup

robin.userapp.io

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Re: Finding the right CDN for our startup

#3

Post by anderspetersson »

I made the switch from Rackspace Cloudfiles + CDN to Amazon S3 + Cloudfront a couple months ago. I was regularly getting emails about my app erroring when someone uploaded a file via my app to Rackspace, since Rackspace was down (or responding slowly).

Now I'm happy with Amazon S3 + Cloudfront, it's cheaper and more stable.

Re: Finding the right CDN for our startup

#4

Post by typerandom »

anderspetersson wrote: post #3

I made the switch from Rackspace Cloudfiles + CDN to Amazon S3 + Cloudfront a couple months ago. I was regularly getting emails about my app erroring when someone uploaded a file via my app to Rackspace, since Rackspace was down (or responding slowly). Now I'm happy with Amazon S3 + Cloudfront, it's cheaper and more stable.

I wish we could use CloudFront. Unfortunately they charge a bit for custom SSL ($600/zone/mo). Not that fun for a startup. Are you also using that? /R

Re: Finding the right CDN for our startup

#5

Post by noelwelsh »

We use MaxCDN. It seems to work well, but I find all CDNs fairly opaque. How can I actually measure latency? I can't with web browsers being the way they are, so I really have no way of knowing. (There is http://www.w3.org/TR/navigation-timing/ but it is very limited, and not suitable for us.)

Clarification psated from a comment I made below:

Sure, I can test my latency, but I'm more interested in what my customers are experiencing. For instance, we have a big customer over in east Asia and I have very little idea what latency they get. When we were using Cloudfront a customer in Australia complained that they were seeing timeouts. It seems there was a bug in Amazon's routing table as Cloudfront has a POP in Sydney but their requests were going somewhere much further away.

Re: Finding the right CDN for our startup

#7

Post by typerandom »

noelwelsh wrote: post #5

We use MaxCDN. It seems to work well, but I find all CDNs fairly opaque. How can I actually measure latency? I can't with web browsers being the way they are, so I really have no way of knowing. (There is http://www.w3.org/TR/navigation-timing/ but it is very limited, and not suitable for us.) Clarification psated from a comment I made below: Sure, I can test my latency, but I'm more interested in what my customers a…

Pingdom's response time report is really nice. We also used LoadImpact to test it against "flash mobs" :)

Re: Finding the right CDN for our startup

#8

Post by SudoAlex »

This is probably setting the requirements a bit too high for the average site - requiring a unique SSL certificate from their CDN provider.

Most sites will probably be fine using SSL for their main site using their main servers - requests going direct to the site, with static/media files being served from a shared SSL certificate with their CDN.

Re: Finding the right CDN for our startup

#9

Post by nwh »

noelwelsh wrote: post #5

We use MaxCDN. It seems to work well, but I find all CDNs fairly opaque. How can I actually measure latency? I can't with web browsers being the way they are, so I really have no way of knowing. (There is http://www.w3.org/TR/navigation-timing/ but it is very limited, and not suitable for us.) Clarification psated from a comment I made below: Sure, I can test my latency, but I'm more interested in what my customers a…

All major browsers allow you to profile each load time of every single resource. Perfect for trying to compare relative latency at a particular location for a particular CDN. Chrome'a is especially good for this sort of thing, look at "network" in the developer tools.
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