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CDN Decreasing Time to First Byte (CDN)

Discussion in 'Domains, DNS, Email & SSL Certificates' started by RB1, Jan 26, 2017.

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  1. Jan 26, 2017 #1
    RB1

    RB1 Active Member

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    I posted this in Off Topic because it's not necessarily about Centminmod.

    My question is how you reduce the time to first byte. I'm currently testing out three different CDNs (Rackspace, Cloudfront, and KeyCDN). The website is 100% static and only contains one HTML file and one CSS file so it's all on the CDN. All three fail webpagetest.org with a First Byte Time between 0.928s and 1.172s.

    What I still don't understand is how I can get a lower time to first byte on the same website hosted on a VPS without a CDN. Keep in mind that my server is in the southern US and I'm testing in Europe/South America/Australia. Two static files on a CDN can't outperform a VPS thousands of miles away?

    I'm not discrediting Centminmod because the optimization is awesome, I just don't understand...there's latency/distance involved with a single server which should be minimal with nearby CDN POPs!?
     
  2. Jan 26, 2017 #2
    eva2000

    eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

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    • Informative Informative x 1
  3. Jan 27, 2017 #3
    RB1

    RB1 Active Member

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    Even initial render time is mostly slower.
    Data captured from: WebPagetest - Website Performance and Optimization Test

    CDN comparison Buenos Aires, Argentina:
    ☒ Rackspace: +287ms (32% increase)
    ☒ KeyCDN: +587ms (65% increase)
    ☑ Cloudfront: -119ms (13% decrease)
    ☑ Cloudflare: -522ms (58% decrease)

    CDN comparison Australia:
    ☒ Rackspace: +499ms (57% increase)
    ☒ KeyCDN: +986ms (112% increase)
    ☑ Cloudfront: -201ms (23% decrease)
    ☑ Cloudflare: -500ms (57% decrease)

    CDN comparison Singapore:
    ☒ Rackspace: +800ms (74% increase)
    ☒ KeyCDN: +592ms (55% increase)
    ☒ Cloudfront: +100ms (9% increase)
    ☑ Cloudflare: -307ms (28% decrease)

    CDN comparison Frankfurt, Germany:
    ☒ Rackspace: +796ms (117% increase)
    ☑ KeyCDN: -101ms (15% decrease)
    ☒ Cloudfront: +95ms (14% increase)
    ☑ Cloudflare: -302ms (44% decrease)

    Doesn't seem like enough data, but from these four tests Cloudfront looks to be just slightly better in terms of initial render time. Maybe I should just stick with Cloudfront and forget about benchmarking every little thing. Seems like Amazon has a good them going for them with Cloudfront + Route 53 (which I have yet to try out).

    Edit: Cloudflare might be a better option
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2017
  4. Jan 27, 2017 #4
    BamaStangGuy

    BamaStangGuy Active Member

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    What happens if you put it behind CloudFlare without any other cdn.
     
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  5. Jan 27, 2017 #5
    RB1

    RB1 Active Member

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    Just added Cloudflare stats
    Maybe Cloudflare is the way to go!
     
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  6. Jan 27, 2017 #6
    eva2000

    eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

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    yeah Cloudflare has improved alot due to number of CDN edge locations they have now!
     
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  7. Jan 27, 2017 #7
    RB1

    RB1 Active Member

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    I still don't know how they offer all this for free compared to the other CDNs :)
    I know some specific features might be missing, but still...
     
  8. Jan 27, 2017 #8
    eva2000

    eva2000 Administrator Staff Member

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    well it helps if they managed to get $182 million in funding to get started https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cloudflare :)
     
    • Winner Winner x 1
  9. Jan 27, 2017 #9
    BamaStangGuy

    BamaStangGuy Active Member

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    When we move to OVH we will be upgrading to CloudFlare business and using Railgun. Looking forward to see the improvements with that.
     
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  10. Jan 27, 2017 #10
    RB1

    RB1 Active Member

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    I wish they had account wide plans. I own about 15 domains I would like to have on Cloudflare but I can't see paying for each of them individually.
     
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  11. Jan 27, 2017 #11
    BamaStangGuy

    BamaStangGuy Active Member

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    Luckily we were grandfathered into their $5 plan.
     
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