CDN DNS CDNs and DNS performance ?

How are you liking Route 53 for centminmod.com?
I'm currently using Rackspace Cloud DNS but it seems like Amazon Route 53 has a lot more locations to reduce latency.

On my new server I plan on getting paid traffic from all over the world (specifically on mobile devices with perhaps not the best connection speeds). Would Route 53 DNS with the Latency Routing Policy be my best bet?


Also I'm in the market for a CDN when I start launching some new websites. I currently have the Amazon Cloudfront Free Tier for 6 more months. Should I stick with Amazon? Rackspace Cloud CDN also looks appealing. Any quick tips about how to benchmark the two for the lowest possible latency and speed/availability?

Edit: Sorry, this should probably be its own thread...

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Cool I will check that out.
Here's one of my websites using Rackspace Cloud DNS (free). Server is located in Dallas, TX:

TurboBytes Test:


Yes...I meant Cloudfront. I looked at KeyCDN but it looks like there's a minimum usage of $49/yr. That pricing works out to be ~100GB/mo at ~$4/mo I don't think I need that much for now and will be overpaying. Cloudflare looks amazing but how can they offer all that for free :\

Another test of a static asset on my site using KeyCDN Web Performance Test:


Luckily for me I can host a lot of my websites purely on a CDN because it's only static assets. The problem is that I have a server in front of all these sites that is hosting software that redirects users to the sites hosted on the CDN. I guess I will need to figure how to reduce the latency to this server specifically from locations all over the world.

 

Yes, the performance test I posted was for my VPS not serving any content from a CDN.
I'm not worried about the webpages my visitors will land on (at the end of the redirect path) because they are hosted 100% on a CDN, however, the visitor will need to initially connect to my VPS in order to be redirected. I'm worried about the latency to this server. I cannot use use a CDN for this one

 

Yes but it would be purely for Cloudflare DNS because nothing in the 1st server/domain is cached.
Excuse me if I don't understand the fundamental workings of a DNS service, but if my server is located in the Southern US and the visitor is in Vietnam, Cloudflare DNS will improve lookup time, but latency/connection time/speed is still impacted negatively?

 

Thanks, reading through all that!
Hmm...on their IPv6 Ping Tool I'm getting "na ms" on all datacenters except Dallas (that is actually where my server is located...
On IPv4 I get "na ms" on around 5 datacenters.
I don't get any errors pinging google.com on IPv4 or IPv6 and centminmod.com so it's definitely not their servers.

I think maybe my firewall is messed up or I misconfigured something


Disabling firewall with "csf -x" and re-running the test produced the same results.

 

But even with CSF disabled?

 

Looks good on Free online ping test traceroute from multiple locations worldwide with no packet loss although some locations seem to be down.
Everything good on Site24x7 - Website Monitoring Tools as well.

OK I was probably getting the errors on the KeyCDN Ping Tool because I didn't restart nginx after disabling csf
Also with csf re-enabled I'm getting just a couple errors on the other ping tools that were previously showing no problems.

Should this be something to worry about? You don't want real visitors to be firewalled unless they are doing something REALLY malicious. I'm using the default csf settings apart from unblocking IPv6

 

Rackspace CDN is looking very decent so far
Faster than KeyCDN from a couple tests so far.

I'm trying to figure out how to setup a pull zone that adds the PageSpeed optimized assets to the CDN

 

Looks like there's some limitation with the CNAMEs/DNS records and you cannot serve the non-www version of your site with pull CDN access.

Do many other CDNs have the same limitations? I believe Amazon has the same problem

 

No I haven't...are you looking to signup or are you already using it?

I've only tried Cloudfront, KeyCDN, Rackspace CDN (uses Akamai), and Cloudflare.
While I ran some tests, I wouldn't really call my data accurate. Running random site load benchmarks from gtmetrix/webpage test/keycdn tools provided very inconsistent results. One CDN is very fast in some countries but slow in others. It was too hard to see the bigger picture.

I wish there was a site that you could compare X number of domains across multiple countries on every continent for your full website (not just 1 asset).

If you are interested in any of the above CDNs, use eva2000's referral link, as it supports development of Centminmod and hosting of this forum