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Finding the right CDN for our startup
- moot 13y agoI'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.
- PLenz 13y agoAnother point for Cloudflare here. Seriously boost in site responsiveness after we went with them on our site. They also have a CDN of JS and CSS libs that we use extensively at http://cdnjs.com/ http://cdnjs.com/
- computer 13y agoJust adding my personal experience: my sites went from a 30ms response time (measured by Google's webmaster tools, as Googlebot sees it) to over 250ms on CloudFlare, for static (cacheable) content. Turning it back off gave a very clear improvement both in my own experience and according to Google's chart.
- ommm 13y agoIt was due to 4chan's success with CF that I chose it for the projects I was the lead system architect for.
- opendomain 13y agoI can not recommend CloudFlare enough. They offer a LOT of services for FREE! I have never had any problems and they use 2 factor auth.
- typerandom 13y agoWhat is your experience? :) What CDN are you using for your startup today? /Robin
- Wouter33 13y agoI have been using CDN77.com, you should check them out. Custom SSL is 699 dollars but the performance is really good.
- anderspetersson 13y agoI 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.
- typerandom 13y agoI 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
- babuskov 13y agoI 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 FDCServers, which are 3.3x more expensive than equivallent Hetzner server. And this was one of the cheapest I found. I find most Amazon services to be overpriced. IMHO, you're just paying more for the brand name.
- timothy89 13y agoThe 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 little extra to don't have to think of that ever again ;)
- tlarkworthy 13y ago1. premature optimization 2. you don't need a CDN to host stuff virtually (AWS, GAE, rackspace, Azure, linode etc.).
- noelwelsh 13y agoWe 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/ 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.
- typerandom 13y agoPingdom's response time report is really nice. We also used LoadImpact to test it against "flash mobs" :)
- nwh 13y agoAll 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.
- noelwelsh 13y agoSure, 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.
- gabemart 13y agoYou could try a tool like http://cloudmonitor.ca.com/en/checkit.php http://cloudmonitor.ca.com/en/checkit.php
- SudoAlex 13y agoThis 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.
- jrnkntl 13y agoI 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 https://somethingsomething.cloudfront.net enough to be on the safe side? Really curious.
- noelwelsh 13y agoDepends on the situation. Our product (Myna; mynaweb.com) provides a JS client that our customers embed on their web sites. If we give them a Cloudfront URL we have just created a big legacy problem for ourselves if we ever want to move off Cloudfront (and we did and we have!) If you're creating a pure JS client connecting to an API on a different domain you have to worry about CORS support to get cross site requests. It's not a huge problem but it slows your site down a bit (you have to make two requests to check CORS permissions and then send data, where you could make one without this issue) and you can't support legacy browsers. So there are a few reasons why using a Cloudfront URL might not be 100% suitable.
- latch 13y agoDNS provides an abstraction. If you use your own domain, you can change the underlying provider without breaking existing links.
- cmer 13y agoWe 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.
- peteretep 13y agoI've not used Fastly, but I know how competent the guys behind it are, and I'd start any search there...
- stevedomin 13y agoI'd highly recommend Fastly too. Great product and great support. The guys there are doing an impressive job.
- typerandom 13y agoI actually looked at Fastly just a few days ago. Unfortunately their custom SSL fees are a bit high. But seems really nice and will definitely do a write-up if we try them.
- twistedpair 13y agoOn 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.
- randomhunt 13y agoPlease don't go to Cloudfront, it's truly horrendous (wearing my end user hat) to see so many sites have problems and timeouts because of them. For example Ninite.com moved to them and now the site is virtually unusable because of it, over 90% of the time I get a "403: Forbidden" error when trying to do anything...like send them feedback on how the website doesn't work... I even see more HN problems this week and I'm sure its because of them.
- asb 13y agoDo you mean CloudFlare rather than CloudFront?
- randomhunt 13y agoPerhaps re: HN, and if so I apologise for confusion, but for Ninite it's CouldFront (d3doxs0mwx271h.cloudfront.net). I spent a short while investigating if there was an easy way to get it working but ended up just giving up on the site.
- asb 13y agoYes, the recent HN change is to introduce CloudFlare.
- slowdown 13y agoProspective 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.
- groks 13y agoYou're having problems with uploads only? What about downloads?
- slowdown 13y agoSometimes they don't resolve properly too. And for vide, it's worse, they don't set the Mime type sometimes, which is quite irritating, for example say Mp4, because the video tag needs this to be set for it to work consistently :(
- groks 13y agoThey don't set the mime-type on upload, or you set the mime-type on upload and they fail to set it when you download it via the Akami CDN? I was planning to use Cloud Files and it's CDN. Thanks for sharing.
- slowdown 13y agoTheir docs say they do it automatically, but for me sometimes they don't, which sucks and breaks my video player (flowplayer) on my sites. :(
- tow21 13y agoAlso worth looking at OVH: http://www.ovh.co.uk/cdn/ http://www.ovh.co.uk/cdn/ £8.99/month including SSL. (Note, I haven't actually tried it myself!)
- latch 13y agoI briefly tested OVH's CDN, it wasn't great. First, you use rules (patterns) to set the TTL, rather than headers. Second, I just couldn't get the SSL working. I'd upload the certificate, it would say that it would show up shortly, but days later, nothing. Third, the routing seemed messed[1]. Their support normally isn't horrible, but it took weeks to get anyone to acknowledge the support request that I opened on this, even after escalating it. [1] I know people like to point out that internet routing has nothing to do with geography. But I squarely refuse to believe that, Singapore users should get routed to France (they have a POP in Singapore, HK and Japan).
- cloudflare 13y agotyperandom: if you have time I'd be interested in understanding the performance problems you reported on CF. My email is in my profile.
- typerandom 13y agoThanks. Would be happy really if we got it working with CloudFlare! /R
- lixef 13y agoSince it's not all about the pricing for SSL pricing, I can recommend this site: http://www.cdnplanet.com/ http://www.cdnplanet.com/ They provide a pretty nice overview about edge locations and other important options for considering to use a certain service.
- kalleboo 13y agoAre the high SSL costs because they need a dedicated IP per domain at each of their POPs? Would it be possible for them to offer an SNI-only SSL option for far cheaper if you know beforehand who your clients are (say, if you're hosting content for an iOS app)?
- twistedpair 13y agoCloudFront is the same, $600/mo/cert. They claim it is not so much the cert as the need for a dedicated IPv4 address at each edge node (45 edges and counting), and the paucity of addresses left in said pool. CloudFront has been asking a lot about a hypothetical SNI only offering in their user surveys lately, so that is likely the route they'll pursue shortly for far cheaper SSL options.
- stellar678 13y agoCDN.net offers the Subject Alternate Name option for $199/year. I've been doing research but we haven't tried them yet. Edit: Just recalled they use Subject Alternate Name, not SNI. This is where they add your domain to their SSL certificate.
- alecsmart1 13y agoWe were using Amazon CloudFront and bleeding money. Approximately spending about $50 every 2 days. I researched to find a cheaper alternative. And found cdn77.com. Very good and reliable. The costs came down to approx $100/mo. I am not sure about custom SSL pricing though.
- philfreo 13y agoBleeding money due to frequent cache invalidations, or traffic?
- jread 13y agoI created a browser based test a few years ago that captures CDN latency from real users and correlates the results regionally using MaxMind (http://cloudharmony.com/speedtest http://cloudharmony.com/speedtest). CDNs set themselves apart outside of the US where infrastructure is more complex and costs are higher. I posted a spreadsheet that provides a breakdown on CDN latency globally based on this testing (tens of thousands of tests from thousands of ISPs): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Al_R0WNcU3q9dGV1OU93YXZHaDJPcmtRQ1lWZnp4c1E&usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Al_R0WNcU3q9dGV...
- neilk 13y agoHow can you do a fair test across so many different providers? Presumably you did not host the exact same content with every single service. Also, I'd be interested in seeing the results for Fastly.
- dedalus 13y agoTry www.instartlogic.com which is much better if you have dynamic content or image heavy apart from letting you not buy new servers thanks to the offload while providing great user experience
- captn3m0 13y agoGitHub switched from Akamai to Fastly a little while back. I'd love to see a comparison of all these services.
- ksec 13y agoThe major problem is SSL Pricing. Which i have never looked at. 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.
- philip1209 13y agoI do not understand why a custom domain with a custom SSL certificate was necessary. Why not serve SSL off of the Cloudfront domain at normal cost?
- tedivm 13y agoI could write pages about managing CDNs, but unfortunately have to run. As an abbreviated version, Malwarebytes (company I work for) balances several CDNs around the globe to try to get the best performance possible (as well as to deal with some security issues inherent to hosting an antimalware tool). We have relationships with quite a few (not all of those relationships positive). 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).
- lazyant 13y agoany experiences with Google's PageSpeed?