"CDN" entries
How to leverage the browser cache with a CDN
An introduction to multi-level caching.
Since a content delivery network (CDN) is essentially a cache, you might be tempted not to make use of the cache in the browser, to avoid complexity. However, each cache has its own advantages that the other does not provide. In this post I will explain what the advantages of each are, and how to combine the two for the most optimal performance of your website.
Why use both?
While CDNs do a good job of delivering assets very quickly, they can’t do much about users who are out in the boonies and barely have a single bar of reception on their phone. As a matter of fact, in the US, the 95th percentile for the round trip time (RTT) to all CDNs is well in excess of 200 milliseconds, according to Cedexis reports. That means at least 5% of your users, if not more, are likely to have a slow experience with your website or application. For reference, the 50th percentile, or median, RTT is around 45 milliseconds.
So why bother using a CDN at all? Why not just rely on the browser cache?
7 takeaways from Velocity Europe
Taking a look at the current issues affecting the Web operations and performance space.
Editor’s note: The European edition of our Velocity conference wrapped up a few weeks ago, and now that the jet lag has passed I’ve had a chance to reflect on the talks and excellent hallway conversations I had throughout. And while I thoroughly enjoyed all the sessions I introduced, one of the downsides to being a chair is that I can’t attend all the other sessions at the same time. As such, I always look around for excellent dissections of the conference from other people; this summary by Peter Arijs from CoScale closely reflects some of the themes I saw, including a few of the standout talks.
November in Barcelona was full of action for web and big data practitioners, with the Velocity and Strata-Hadoop conferences and side events such as WebPerfDays and Papis.io. As a startup in the web application monitoring and analytics space, it was the perfect time to get a pulse on the state of the art, and talk to some of our clients and prospects. Below is a summary of personal take-away points from selected Velocity sessions and personal interactions.