[RedWingFan]

Originally Posted by imported_silkroad

It is a lot of work to move vB static object to a CDN, so much is hard coded without phrasing or style vars. Some are hard coded in the dB. Some plugins are even worse. I could not get a 100% solution, but I'm happy with the 99% solution for now.

Did you go the replacement variable route, or did you do something else? I realize that I'm probably missing a handful of files, but at least I have the majority of them on the CDN. My solution may be 95%...

P.S. I'm glad it worked out for you! I, too, like the Mirror Bucket method vs. uploading, as it also takes into account what I'd call "semi static" images like avatars, where members are uploading new avatars all day long. No worries on how to sync them.

Originally Posted by john2k

In my opinion, that's what CDNs are really being created for. But, I use a CDN for basically the same reason as you. Last month I offloaded just under 50 million image views to a CDN. The sole reason that I began using a CDN wasn't about the network latency benefit but was to reduce load on my webserver until my new server is built & colocated. Even after my new server is online I might keep images running from a CDN but am not certain about that just yet.

One drawback (not really a drawback, but...) is that we have our static files out there on the CDN, served out quickly, but the rest of the site is still hosted on a single server. We really aren't exploring the full capabilities of CDN, but if it's serving our needs and doing what we need it to do, who's to argue?

Something that happened last week sort of left me amazed at how some systems administrators are not using CDNs, that could be. When the Beatles remasters were released to radio last week, using the Play MPE service, you can imagine how bogged down their servers got when everyone started their downloads. To fix the problem, they had their host sell them more bandwidth, and IIRC, they may have also had to beef up their hardware.

If this wasn't an application tailor-made to a CDN, I can't think of another! Flexible bandwidth delivery, available on demand. And I'm sure with so many edge servers, delivery itself would have been faster as well.

While they were all FLAC files, still...figure 14 or 15 CDs worth of FLACs being downloaded by hundreds of radio stations...nothing this big is going to come along in the near future, and they'll find their new configuration is overkill for what they would normally use. More expense. With CDN (or at least SimpleCDN), it's essentially "pay as you go". You pay for what you use. They could have handled the spike without needing to do anything on their end.

But what do I know? I just run a lowly music forum on someone's behalf...