/clientscripts over to Amazon S3/Cloudfront?

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by RedWingFan

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%...

Everything... RRs, template edits, CSS edits, stylevars and manual database edits.... it is really a lot (a LOT) of unnecessary work to move content to a CDN with vBulletin. A few configuration variables (like vB does for YUI), and the vB would be CDN friendly. I worked my you-know-what off, and still think we are only 95 percent there.

Plugins are worse. vBSEO is not CDN friendly (and they don't seem to care either, LOL). Most plugins have hard coded paths as well......

The good news if that if you need a CDN, that is a "good problem to have" ..... so we can't complain too much can we? On the other hand, it would be so simple for Jelsoft to make vB CDN friendly. (((They add features in their releases that are useless for many of us. We just would like to see some simple CDN friendliness, ROTFL, not a bunch of fluffy suboptimal blogs and very little used social networking features ...... )))

[RedWingFan]

Originally Posted by imported_silkroad

Everything... RRs, template edits, CSS edits, stylevars and manual database edits.... it is really a lot (a LOT) of unnecessary work to move content to a CDN with vBulletin. A few configuration variables (like vB does for YUI), and the vB would be CDN friendly. I worked my you-know-what off, and still think we are only 95 percent there.

That's one reason I went with the replacement variable option: I didn't want to invest a lot of work in something that we were only using on a trial basis, and be too difficult to undo if we decided not to go with the CDN after all. By doing a View Source on the vB pages, I could see all the rewritten URLs, and that is how I solved one of my problems (can't recall if it was clientscript, or CSS, or the avatars).

I agree about the amount of work: one of my wishlist features for vB would be configurable paths, which would apply to CDNs and/or hosting images on other servers. The other wishlist feature would be Sphinx search integration, but that's a whole different topic!

[john2k]

Originally Posted by imported_silkroad

Actually we use a CDN for a number of reasons (not one reason).

• Global delivery from the CDN network (network performance, end user experience globally)
• Deliver static content from "other than" origin server (server performance, user experience globally) reducing load (CPU, memory, and device IO) on origin-server.
• Network robustness, more secure, content delivered from many nodes globally, not one node or a geographic cluster.

I agree with all of this. What initially got me using a CDN was to offload hosting of static content, as you also mentioned a few times in this thread, in order to increase the performance of my server for the dynamic content. However, everything that you mentioned here might be what keeps me using CDNs even after I upgrade my server.

Originally Posted by imported_silkroad

PS: I am now considering GeoIP-based DNS in the future, for distributing origin servers globally, but there is no rush for this at the moment.

I wish one of the free DNS providers like SiteLutions offered GeoIP-based DNS services. Do you know of any?

I've been using DNSMadeEasy for a while since they have a very robust DNS architechture at a great price, but I do not believe they offer GeoIP DNS services. Even some of the CDNs do not use DNS for redirecting viewers to their edge servers but rather do this per each request, probably using a GeoIP database such as the one provided by MaxMind and dynamically selecting which edge server to redirect the viewer to. This is also good in some cases for the CDNs that can dynamically redirect traffic away from congested nodes.

Originally Posted by imported_silkroad

RE: Highwinds

Highwinds does not appear to publish their pricing model like Amazon and SimpleCDN.

I actually first started using Highwinds via SimpleCDN as they promoted Highwinds' Hurricane service as their enterprise offering. The price was something like 7.9 cents per GB + a small storage fee. Highwinds has roughly twice the number of locations as SimpleCDN and I believe they also peer directly with many ISPs (I think it's something like 900 or so ISPs). Highwinds also has a great stats reporting system. SimpleCDN, afaik, has recently stopped using Highwinds, though.

At this point, though, I wouldn't recommend Highwinds for static images because the way they redirect images to their edge servers causes the images to not be browser cache friendly. It's rarely an issue, because they are usually quite fast, but I still think that more efficient use of the browser cache would speed things up even more.

Originally Posted by imported_silkroad

Also, since we are taking vBulletin forums, most forums serve small images (buttons, attachments, icons, avatars), CSS files and JavaScript (as static content).

Forums are not really applications that serve streaming coverage of presidential inaugurations (that is not really vBulletin).

Bringing massive streaming content requirements into the discussion has very little to with a "normal" vBulletin application, frankly speaking, which would be 99.99+ vBulletin sites.

Of course. I was simply explaining the true design purpose for CDNs and the business need that they were created to address. That is, getting the content closer to end users in order to better address the network issues.

[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by john2k

I was simply explaining the true design purpose for CDNs and the business need that they were created to address. That is, getting the content closer to end users in order to better address the network issues.

I worked with Akamai and their CDN a number of years ago, long before the new CDN players we have now.

The purpose of CDNs have been to improve content delivery. The "top" established CDNs (like Akamai) use proprietary algorithms to determine the best place to serve content. The best node / location to serve content may or may-not be "closer" to the end user.

Most commercial CDNs do not rely on "closeness" but on a type of global performance map that directs users to the best delivery point, regardless of geographic distance.

So, for well designed CDNs (from the beginning of CDN history), network latency, load, bandwidth, etc were all key criteria to determine where to serve content.

Currently, one CDN I know of is serving EU users from the US because their EU nodes have been under a severe DDOS attack (another advantage of using a CDN in practice).

Cheers.

[tpearl5]

Can anyone help with this problem: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1786627 ?

[hydn]

Originally Posted by tpearl5

Can anyone help with this problem: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1786627 ?

Yup mirror the same files AND the same folder structure as your forum root ON the CDN.

OR create a rewrite

Works like a charm.

[tpearl5]

it's a little more complicated than that. take a look at the wysiwyg problem

[imported_silkroad]

OBTW, we have experiencing very bad performance problems with SimpleCDN.

PS: We have been running all js and images thru the CDN (including the wysiwyg clientscript).

[RCA]

timeouts with SimpleCDN here too, seems origin cache bot wasn't working correctly.

At this moment is ok again.

[imported_silkroad]

Thanks. We can't even get SimpleCDN to respond to any performance related support tickets. We have noticed they are not reliable and are starting to seek a better provider.