/clientscripts over to Amazon S3/Cloudfront?

[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.