4 ms·

So, yeah, ugh, why would a niche library (in the sense that it's not jQuery or YUI) need to operate its own CDN, for anything other than style points? There are

by joshmn 10y ago

So, yeah, ugh, why would a niche library (in the sense that it's not jQuery or YUI) need to operate its own CDN, for anything other than style points? There are major players who are already doing this who own and operate their own network (see MaxCDN). What's wrong with just plugging into their existing infrastructure? If that fails, I'd give a shout to FDCServers or LeaseWeb (or of that capacity) and see what they can do. I know of a handful of people who've moved 100TB monthly for less than $100/month, just because they asked.

stablemap 10y ago
Was this the case in 2011 when MathJax began offering this? I don't know the answer.
- joshmn 10y ago
  In 2011 were they piping 70TB?
taspeotis 10y ago
You say "niche" but... > 179 Million monthly users and 70TB traffic last month
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
buu700 10y ago
Why is this downvoted? Nitpicking of the phrase "niche library" aside, I'm having trouble understanding this without more context as well. The post starts: > Our CDN has been an important part of MathJax’s history. When MathJax made its first public release in 2010, hosting a library like MathJax was a complex challenge. The CDN launched a year later and helped resolve this difficulty What is "like MathJax" alluding to? Standing up a web host to serve a single JS file sounds like the opposite of a "complex challenge", so there must be something else going on here. After reading further down, I see that the post does mention that "A common concern with local installations is the size of a complete copy of MathJax, in particular the ~29,000 PNGs", so I guess that's what they're talking about? If so, the comments at the top make more sense and their having had their own CDN at all is more understandable in that light, but it seems needlessly confusing not to lead with that explanation.
- joshmn 10y ago
  Your guess is as good as mine. I edited my original post to reflect my subjectiveness of niche. I guess my point was that... Okay, so they took advantage of CloudFlare. Great, plenty of people do that, but not on the scale of 10s of TBs. What plan were they on with CF? The $20/month one? If I was a provider, I wouldn't want someone moving that volume of data through my pipes for $20/month (but as a developer, I'd love it) They mentioned how Google provided free storage. Storage is so cheap! Providers make their money on bandwidth. Having said, I can't imagine what kind of price they paid for bandwidth. Like I alluded to in my (now edited) original post: Guys, it never hurts to do your research in the hosting space and learn that there is more to hosting than just AWS/Google/Azure/Heroku/OVH/DigitalOcean/Vultr. Go to webhostingtalk.com, learn a bit, browse the offers forums, write some emails, compare providers, ask questions. Hosting isn't complicated, especially compared to some of the problems you're/we're solving.
  - lrem 10y ago
    Let's say you don't care about DDOS protection and can live with 0.1x the number of PoPs. How much does it cost these days to host these terabytes/month from ≥10 well spread locations?
    - joshmn 10y ago
      FDC comes out to ~$350/month. They always have promos going on, wouldn't be surprised to that number get halved without much effort.
    - zzzcpan 10y ago
      If you care about cost you can get away with only a couple of locations, totaling maybe slightly over $100 monthly.
      - tyingq 10y ago
        I don't see 70TB of outbound bandwidth fitting into $100/month. Even with unmetered bandwidth servers, you would need quite a few of them. 100Mbps, full throttle, for a month, is less than half their 70TB/month requirement. And that's if the bandwidth needs were even across the whole day, without spikes. Even a bare bones budget setup is going to be $300-$400/month, and that's cutting it very close and providing crap service with some users downloading from across the globe.

by joshmn 10y ago

stablemap 10y ago

Was this the case in 2011 when MathJax began offering this? I don't know the answer.

joshmn 10y ago
In 2011 were they piping 70TB?

taspeotis 10y ago

You say "niche" but... > 179 Million monthly users and 70TB traffic last month

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

buu700 10y ago

Why is this downvoted? Nitpicking of the phrase "niche library" aside, I'm having trouble understanding this without more context as well. The post starts: > Our CDN has been an important part of MathJax’s history. When MathJax made its first public release in 2010, hosting a library like MathJax was a complex challenge. The CDN launched a year later and helped resolve this difficulty What is "like MathJax" alluding to? Standing up a web host to serve a single JS file sounds like the opposite of a "complex challenge", so there must be something else going on here. After reading further down, I see that the post does mention that "A common concern with local installations is the size of a complete copy of MathJax, in particular the ~29,000 PNGs", so I guess that's what they're talking about? If so, the comments at the top make more sense and their having had their own CDN at all is more understandable in that light, but it seems needlessly confusing not to lead with that explanation.

joshmn 10y ago
Your guess is as good as mine. I edited my original post to reflect my subjectiveness of niche. I guess my point was that... Okay, so they took advantage of CloudFlare. Great, plenty of people do that, but not on the scale of 10s of TBs. What plan were they on with CF? The $20/month one? If I was a provider, I wouldn't want someone moving that volume of data through my pipes for $20/month (but as a developer, I'd love it) They mentioned how Google provided free storage. Storage is so cheap! Providers make their money on bandwidth. Having said, I can't imagine what kind of price they paid for bandwidth. Like I alluded to in my (now edited) original post: Guys, it never hurts to do your research in the hosting space and learn that there is more to hosting than just AWS/Google/Azure/Heroku/OVH/DigitalOcean/Vultr. Go to webhostingtalk.com, learn a bit, browse the offers forums, write some emails, compare providers, ask questions. Hosting isn't complicated, especially compared to some of the problems you're/we're solving.
- lrem 10y ago
  Let's say you don't care about DDOS protection and can live with 0.1x the number of PoPs. How much does it cost these days to host these terabytes/month from ≥10 well spread locations?
  - joshmn 10y ago
    FDC comes out to ~$350/month. They always have promos going on, wouldn't be surprised to that number get halved without much effort.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    If you care about cost you can get away with only a couple of locations, totaling maybe slightly over $100 monthly.
    - tyingq 10y ago
      I don't see 70TB of outbound bandwidth fitting into $100/month. Even with unmetered bandwidth servers, you would need quite a few of them. 100Mbps, full throttle, for a month, is less than half their 70TB/month requirement. And that's if the bandwidth needs were even across the whole day, without spikes. Even a bare bones budget setup is going to be $300-$400/month, and that's cutting it very close and providing crap service with some users downloading from across the globe.