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Flowplayer and Simple CDN Feb 4, 2009

Faster response times with SimpleCDN

Flowplayer website has been using a Content Delivery Network for serving static files for quite a while now. This means that our site is loading fast no matter where our customers are globally. We get this service from a superb CDN provider called SimpleCDN. Unlike other CDN providers out there Simple CDN offers significant benefits such as:

The idea behind using a CDN is that our website's files are distributed globally into multiple servers. When a user accesses our site for example from US the static files get loaded from a server close to the user in the US. So basically files are always served from the server closest server to the user. Simple CDN has multiple servers in the US and Europe. Asia is coming soon.

SimpleCDN provides the possibility to map custom domain names to CDN services. Currenlty we have done this for static.flowplayer.org which we are using to serve images, css and JavaScript files. We use gzip compression and maximum expires header so that file sizes are small and files are loaded once per client. When we want to update the file we simply change it's name. This is the main reason why we are using version numbers on all our Flash and JavaScript files.

Video streaming

The stremaing support of SimpleCDN is especially important for video sites. You don't need to puzzle yourself with your own streaming servers and you get global reach with superb performance. All things have been configured on your behalf - you only need to know what kind of URL:s to use for clips and after that you can just use our streaming plugins. Here are a few demos that use SimpleCDN for video streaming

Request headers

Follwing image is s screenshot taken from Firebug console showing all request headers for the flowplayer-3.0.1.min.js file. Note a few things: The file is gzipped making the download size a roughly 6.5 Kb - a really good reason to enable gzipping on your server. The Cache-Control header which defines the max-age to be 10 years. This enables client-side caching so that the file is not loaded from the server after the initial request.

These two settings are the most important settings to make your pages load faster. If you are familiar with Yahoo's Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site you know why these two settings are so important.

Traceroute

Here is my traceroute output when run on my box here in Finland. You can see that the actual server that made the response was from EU althought Simple CDN is a US based company - Some proof that his really works!

cohen:~ tipiirai$ traceroute static.flowplayer.org 
traceroute to static.flowplayer.org-s2.simplecdn.net (206.55.107.27), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1  home.gateway (192.168.0.254)  0.807 ms  0.482 ms  0.495 ms
2  co6.alto.esp.fi.eunetip.net (195.197.59.23)  6.485 ms  5.640 ms  5.213 ms
3  ge9-9-4003.mx1.alto.esp.fi.eunetip.net (213.192.181.116)  6.517 ms  5.696 ms  5.553 ms
4  ae2-0.cr1.alto.esp.fi.eunetip.net (213.192.181.221)  6.563 ms  5.948 ms  7.412 ms
5  ge1-1-10.espsti1.fi.elisa.net (213.192.181.54)  7.278 ms  10.515 ms  6.412 ms
6  ge0-3-0.esptap-p1.fi.elisa.net (139.97.11.241)  6.717 ms  5.884 ms  6.305 ms
7  ae2.heltli-gw1.fi.elisa.net (139.97.6.246)  6.416 ms  6.606 ms  6.910 ms
8  ae1-10.bbr2.hel1.fi.eunetip.net (213.192.191.49)  6.737 ms  6.452 ms  6.739 ms
9  as0-0.bbr1.sto1.se.eunetip.net (213.192.191.210)  13.359 ms  13.656 ms  13.689 ms
10  so1-0-0-0.bbr1.ams1.nl.eunetip.net (213.192.191.226)  45.665 ms  46.294 ms  45.224 ms
11  amsix1.eun.ams.as8218.eu (195.69.145.47)  46.448 ms  46.473 ms  46.743 ms
12  83.167.63.226.not.updated.as8218.eu (83.167.63.226)  61.898 ms  61.901 ms  62.180 ms
13  xe0-1-0.tcr1.gs.par.as8218.eu (83.167.63.253) 53.931 ms xe1-1-0.tcr1.gs.par.as8218.eu (83.167.63.251) 
14  83.167.56.234 (83.167.56.234)  76.761 ms  62.387 ms  62.655 ms

I'm curious to know what kind of traceroutes people get from across the globe. Please provide one on the comment box below.

Conclusion

I can recommend Simple CDN for website administrators especially if you want video streaming capabilities. You don't need to install your own streaming servers and you get global reach with superb performance. SimpleCDN also gives fast and good support.

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