Channel surfers and the irresistible rise of Content Delivery Networks

Fastly, a four-year-old content delivery network start-up, this month landed $75m in venture funding. It was the firm’s fifth intake of cash, the second in less than a year. What’s remarkable is that inventors are backing a firm that is going up against some big names – among them the massive Amazon juggernaut. Clearly, …

[Anonymous Coward]

"You might even be using one right now."

regmedia.co.uk Cloudflare

www.theregister.co.uk Cloudflare

So I'd say yes.....

[Camilla Smythe]

TL:DR Snore...

If your content isn’t instant, in that five/ten/fifteen seconds (or worse) the chances are a good portion of your audience has gotten sick of waiting and gone elsewhere.

Try telling that one to the Daily Mail. By the time one of their pages has loaded with Celebrity Tits and Arses I've forgotten why I clicked on the link in the first place... I should mention I was not distracted by the Celebrity Tits and Arses.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: not distracted by the Celebrity Tits and Arses

That's because you were on a CDN network.

You should try a CTA network instead !

[Permidion]

"Most of us are using CDNs every day, and probably don’t even realise it."

I see them all all the time because with NoScript you have to allow them one by one before correctly getting some js and see the page content.

[Steve Davies 3]

Other uses for CDN's

is to deliver Adverts, tracking sites and other nasties

Just because the URL has cloudfare in it, it does not mean that it is safe to let through all the time.

Nas any CDN been hacked for Man in the middle attcks. IMHO these sites are ideal for traffic interception.

just saying,

Bef careful out there, it is a jungle

[Pascal Monett]

Worse, it's an atmospheric processor on LV-426 !

[Drudgery Leak]

Ah I wondered what a CDN was.

Also, when I clicked on this article I thought it was going to be about those chappies who offer to create your content for you.

[Tim Brown 1]

CDNs don't play nice with HTTPS

It's rare for a day to go by without my browser popping up a warning on some supposedly 'secure' site about a certificate not matching a hostname and the culprit is more often than not a CDN.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: CDNs don't play nice with HTTPS

I used to have that problem frequently, but lately (last couple of years) I've only seen this on one site, and it took them about 4 months from my report to their fix.

[VinceH]

"A CDN (sometimes called a Content Distribution Network)"

Wow, something that is abbreviated is sometimes called what the abbreviation stands for!

[Anonymous Coward]

optionally

A Content Delivery Network.

[VinceH]

Re: optionally

Well spotted - and another facepalm, this time for myself, for not noticing Distribution instead of Delivery!

[Medixstiff]

Another thing Adobe seems to screw up

If you’ve downloaded a piece of software from Adobe or Apple, then you’ve been using the Akamai Content Delivery Network.

Except everytime we update iTunes for the corporate iPhone fleet, we have no problems, everytime we try Adobe Flash or Reader installer, it throws up a connection error. Every other site using Akamai runs fine, so I'm going to stick with Adobe screwing it all up.

[toughluck]

Meh

I'd say, put the video on the slowest tier of your network, could even be on tape. Save that flash storage space for ads, this seems to be the way that youtube operates...