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Cloudflare is free: CDN the heck out of it.

scrollaway 9y ago
This very much. You can also save all your media with content hashes in their filename, then tell cloudflare to "always permanently cache" everything behind a certain path using a page rule. I have a site set up like that which serves over 1TB monthly and <5GB of it actually goes through to S3. (And obviously you don't have to use s3 to back it, you can use anything) Bonus points: If you do it this way you can also use immutable caching for clientside savings. More info: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/01/using-immutable-caching-to-speed-up-the-web/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/01/using-immutable-caching-to... This may be dependent on how large your media is however. 5TB sounds like it could be large videos, so some of this may not apply to you. I don't know how well Cloudflare caches videos.
- SXX 9y ago
  Any evidence that Cloudflare will cache even fraction of his 5TB on free plan? While I personally have sites where like 20GB of images were cached on free tier I truly don't expect them to cache as much as even 1TB. > I don't know how well Cloudflare caches videos. It's cache files only under 512MB: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200394750-What-s-the-maximum-file-size-CloudFlare-will-cache- https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200394750-W...
- harlanji 9y ago
  CF does a good job caching, if you do a good job segmenting. Here's a screen cast I did a while back exploring HLS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9TJuWT5sNM&t=6m27s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9TJuWT5sNM&t=6m27s
- vidyesh 9y ago
  Does Cloudflare cache everything no matter how much you feed it? You said <5GB goes through to S3 so that is from the total 1TB of data?
joshribakoff 9y ago
They have a history of randomly deciding it's not free and shutting off people's service without notice. It also slows down your site (cache misses)
- sudhirj 9y ago
  Not so randomly - they seem to shut down sites that take the CDN freeloading to an extreme - image hotlinks, lots of data with not HTML, that kind of thing. If the entire site is being served via CF, they might not mind. They do have a video service in the works, though, need to see how that pans out.
  - joshribakoff 9y ago
    What about a site with a little HTML but lots of files. "Might not mind" doesn't sound like something I would bet my business on. There is a gray area and you can find examples of people that got shut down (without warning) whom would disagree that they crossed that line
    - sudhirj 9y ago
      Get a paid plan if you’re a business or are serious about your site. Don’t think they take unilateral action on paid plans. There’s also an option to pay for bandwidth somewhere, there certainly is when you activate Argo. Can’t really accuse you of free loading once you pay.
pecicek 9y ago
In case Cloudflare's free plan is not enough, I'd suggest going for proven low cost providers such as CDN77, KeyCDN or MaxCDN.

This very much. You can also save all your media with content hashes in their filename, then tell cloudflare to "always permanently cache" everything behind a certain path using a page rule. I have a site set up like that which serves over 1TB monthly and <5GB of it actually goes through to S3. (And obviously you don't have to use s3 to back it, you can use anything) Bonus points: If you do it this way you can also use immutable caching for clientside savings. More info: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/01/using-immutable-caching-to-speed-up-the-web/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/01/using-immutable-caching-to... This may be dependent on how large your media is however. 5TB sounds like it could be large videos, so some of this may not apply to you. I don't know how well Cloudflare caches videos.

SXX 9y ago
Any evidence that Cloudflare will cache even fraction of his 5TB on free plan? While I personally have sites where like 20GB of images were cached on free tier I truly don't expect them to cache as much as even 1TB. > I don't know how well Cloudflare caches videos. It's cache files only under 512MB: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200394750-What-s-the-maximum-file-size-CloudFlare-will-cache- https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200394750-W...
harlanji 9y ago
CF does a good job caching, if you do a good job segmenting. Here's a screen cast I did a while back exploring HLS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9TJuWT5sNM&t=6m27s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9TJuWT5sNM&t=6m27s
vidyesh 9y ago
Does Cloudflare cache everything no matter how much you feed it? You said <5GB goes through to S3 so that is from the total 1TB of data?

joshribakoff 9y ago

They have a history of randomly deciding it's not free and shutting off people's service without notice. It also slows down your site (cache misses)

sudhirj 9y ago
Not so randomly - they seem to shut down sites that take the CDN freeloading to an extreme - image hotlinks, lots of data with not HTML, that kind of thing. If the entire site is being served via CF, they might not mind. They do have a video service in the works, though, need to see how that pans out.
- joshribakoff 9y ago
  What about a site with a little HTML but lots of files. "Might not mind" doesn't sound like something I would bet my business on. There is a gray area and you can find examples of people that got shut down (without warning) whom would disagree that they crossed that line
  - sudhirj 9y ago
    Get a paid plan if you’re a business or are serious about your site. Don’t think they take unilateral action on paid plans. There’s also an option to pay for bandwidth somewhere, there certainly is when you activate Argo. Can’t really accuse you of free loading once you pay.

pecicek 9y ago

In case Cloudflare's free plan is not enough, I'd suggest going for proven low cost providers such as CDN77, KeyCDN or MaxCDN.