Content Delivery Networks

Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2010 4:50 pm

I have just added a small article on CDN's http://www.code-authors.com/content-81.html
This article covers some basic advantages/disadvantages of using a CDN as well as how to create your own psuedo-CDN.
I call it a psuedo-CDN because it has no advantages related to delivering content based on GEO-IP (which a real CDN does) but might be useful to those with a dedicated server/VPS where a number of user accounts might need access to the same files such as jQuery

Site Admin Joined: Jan 06, 2006 Posts: 311

With regards to the following statement from the article:

Quote:

Usually files delivered from a CDN are cached so there are added advantages in that there are less HTTP requests to your own website

That is certainly true, but there is also another consideration in that the browser will only initiate so many HTTP/S requests to the same domain simultaneously. Using a CDN is another way to speed up your site by the browser seeing it as a different domain, so more simultaneous requests are made.

For example, if you have a lot of js, CSS and/or images, if you spread those out across multiple CDN domains, your site will load quicker in the browser just some having more HTTP/S requests getting served at one time.

I learned this from YSlow by the way (available as a FF plug-in).

Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2010 9:03 am

Thanks M, that was an important point that I completely forgot to mention.
I use YSlow myself and some of the results are quite interesting at times, especially when you use ETAGS (RN uses some by default in the htaccess file) to more effectively cache certain file types like images.