I signed up on MaxCDN with high hopes. I use it to host my indie game demos. Since 3 days, the speed from US (the most important market) during peak hours are superslow: if you don't believe it, try yourself downloading this 50mb file (my latest RPG game).

http://files.winterwolves.com/games/PSDemo.exe -> it's using maxCDN but in the past 2 days I'm getting speed lower than my SHARED HOSTING at hostgator!!!

which is: http://www.macgames.biz/games/PSDemo.exe in case you want to compare it.

Outside peak hours works OK, but that's obvious :) I need max speed when US people are awake and playing, not early morning or late night!

80 kbps here :( sorry ...

400 KBps here, on a 100mbps line - so not very impressive at all.

80-120 kbs on a 6.5 mb line (i get f 800-1mbs on the second link, hostgator)

I think the point here is to dump the CDN and stick with hostgator (id check with their usage though and make sure there not going to restrict you at some point)

joe

I'm sorry to hear that, did you file a support ticket to find out the cause of it?

No, I'd rather change CDN completely :) I can understand a few hours, but when you have such low speed for 3 consecutive days, I don't think is a temporary problem!

good luck finding a better CDN, but i said it before these CDN guys are overcharging for crap really. The CDN business is just overcharging because it is new.

Waiting for Germany to get into the CDN business then i can buy for so much much much much......less

Yes, true :(
I found those two services:
https://www.vps.net/level3-signup
http://www.nexcess.net/content-delivery-network

any suggestions/tips/comments? The two networks seems good, right ?

Yes, true :(
I found those two services:
https://www.vps.net/level3-signup
http://www.nexcess.net/content-delivery-network

any suggestions/tips/comments? The two networks seems good, right ?

I can easily see that nexcess.net uses edgecast network

So that's good, right? Edgecast is reputable company AFAIK?

So that's good, right? Edgecast is reputable company AFAIK?

Well if you overpaying whats good in that?
One thing i know is this CDN guys will go out of business pretty soon. Example try use google chrome web browser and see how fast that browser is. It has superpowers i will tell you.

And very soon browsers will start having more features to make websites load faster and countries will start having faster internet connections and so on. CDN will die pretty soon.

I know they will try and lobby here and there especially those big companies that have over invested in it. But it won't work.

Well if you overpaying whats good in that?
One thing i know is this CDN guys will go out of business pretty soon. Example try use google chrome web browser and see how fast that browser is. It has superpowers i will tell you.

And very soon browsers will start having more features to make websites load faster and countries will start having faster internet connections and so on. CDN will die pretty soon.

I know they will try and lobby here and there especially those big companies that have over invested in it. But it won't work.

that's a pretty bold statement - so quicker browsers will replace CDN's? :eek:

that's a pretty bold statement - so quicker browsers will replace CDN's? :eek:

Well why not? When a website loads faster on a web browser. Google i know is taking huge leaps in making the web faster and CDN is just some bunch of crap to me. Hosting your files on other servers to serve nearer visitors and all that.

Plus with the way the companies are just after everyone's money in these thing, they making money out of ignorance of most guys.
There are many factors to it. You can have CDN all you want but if the visitor's internet is very slow, it makes no difference. So ofcourse when visit0rs from other countries start having increased internet speed, then CDN will be of no use at all, really.

Well why not? When a website loads faster on a web browser. Google i know is taking huge leaps in making the web faster and CDN is just some bunch of crap to me. Hosting your files on other servers to serve nearer visitors and all that.
Browsers do not make anything quicker at all. Pre-loading or prefetching is a concept that has been around for a long time and gives the perception that it's faster, when the reality is it's just requesting the data before you want it. The idea is that if you do want the data, part or all of it has already been fetched - giving you the illusion of speed. All it's really doing is consuming and wasting more bandwidth than is necessary. It's a bad thing, believe me.

Plus with the way the companies are just after everyone's money in these thing, they making money out of ignorance of most guys.
There are many factors to it. You can have CDN all you want but if the visitor's internet is very slow, it makes no difference. So ofcourse when visit0rs from other countries start having increased internet speed, then CDN will be of no use at all, really.
Whilst I'm of the opinion that a CDN should not give you magically and amazing improvements in speed, the logic is indeed sound.

Latency does most definitely have a very real effect on transfer speeds. The higher the latency, the lower the top-end transfer speed. Lower latency will also improve response times to and from a server, thus making it load somewhat faster. The closer the server to the user, the lower the latency.

"Faster" is of course relative, and you're right in your statements about the end-users ISP also being a big factor. I honestly believe CDN's are not the magical solution they are sold to be, but they can be useful.

Well why not? When a website loads faster on a web browser. Google i know is taking huge leaps in making the web faster and CDN is just some bunch of crap to me. Hosting your files on other servers to serve nearer visitors and all that.


I second eming's comment that its a bold statement you've there ;)

Well if you overpaying whats good in that?
One thing i know is this CDN guys will go out of business pretty soon. Example try use google chrome web browser and see how fast that browser is. It has superpowers i will tell you.

And very soon browsers will start having more features to make websites load faster and countries will start having faster internet connections and so on. CDN will die pretty soon.

I know they will try and lobby here and there especially those big companies that have over invested in it. But it won't work.

I can only see CDN business goes north. CDN business grows proportionately to traffic growth. Akamai started in 1998 and boomed since then when most of the population was on dialup, so it really defeated your claim of 'CDN is useless to slow connectivity'. It's more likely, the faster connectivity you've, the more sensitive you are to the slightest tiny difference in speed.

Browser does not solve the problem of latency due to geographical distance, and that's how CDN comes in to fill the gap.

Just to remind you that Google has been building datacenters all around the world. If your claim about browser going to 'kill' CDN, sounds like Google spent billions in building something that could have potentially saved them billions by improving browser yet they spent on it. Quite stupid to be Google then.

"Faster" is of course relative, and you're right in your statements about the end-users ISP also being a big factor. I honestly believe CDN's are not the magical solution they are sold to be, but they can be useful.

I agree with you.

But about the preloading of the browser, i mean as long as the pages load faster and i can read the websites faster at least for images (not video streaming) then i am happy, just like everyone should be or want to be. So i don't care about bandwidth.

I find the speed very strange, i would create a ticket, as we use them too for some projects, never seen those slow speeds, usually we get the full speed of our connection. Are you sure that you have setup everything correctly so it does cache your .exe files ? did you whitelist their ip ranges in your firewall when using pull ?

In any case; you should always contact a helpdesk if you see something you dont expect. How you expect someone to solve a issue if you dont tell them there is one.

If you talk about preloading in browsers, i start to wonder if you actually know what a CDN does.

One thing i know is this CDN guys will go out of business pretty soon. Example try use google chrome web browser and see how fast that browser is. It has superpowers i will tell you.

And very soon browsers will start having more features to make websites load faster and countries will start having faster internet connections and so on. CDN will die pretty soon.

You are plain wrong. Maybe you think CDN is these "me too" Barbie's cdn offering cheap services ...

I was talking about delivering of medium size files (well 30-50mb). So browser speed doesn't matter at all :)

I find the speed very strange, i would create a ticket, as we use them too for some projects, never seen those slow speeds, usually we get the full speed of our connection. Are you sure that you have setup everything correctly so it does cache your .exe files ? did you whitelist their ip ranges in your firewall when using pull ?

In any case; you should always contact a helpdesk if you see something you dont expect. How you expect someone to solve a issue if you dont tell them there is one.

If you talk about preloading in browsers, i start to wonder if you actually know what a CDN does.
I don't talk about preloading in browser, it's another user :)
I'll send them a ticket, but I changed NOTHING on my side, and 4 days ago was going at fullspeed. So, I assume that's them that did something.
I've used it since 15 days and before was always working good.

I just checked another friend site and I get similar speed. He's a master geek so no chances he messed up anything. No point even opening a ticket then.

I just checked one of our clients sites; and i get full speed; but if i check yours its indeed really slow. So what was their response ?

Just wondering ; just tried again and i got the full speed; so i think the first time it wasnt cached yet; is that possible you use the pull solution ? and if so, what do the statistics say; how much % is served from the cache; and how did you put up the cache headers ? 1 day or longer term. (for static content i would recommend to make it much longer).

No no, the files are on "Push Zone", I'm pretty sure of that, since I just uploaded yesterday new files with SFTP in it :)

i must agree its at least very strange in that case. wonder what their helpdesk tells you

Another super weird thing: all my stats shows that the traffic comes only from two nodes, LA and NY. Nothing else has traffic. How on earth is that possible, considering I have lots of people from EU that download my games??

I signed up on MaxCDN with high hopes. I use it to host my indie game demos. Since 3 days, the speed from US (the most important market) during peak hours are superslow: if you don't believe it, try yourself downloading this 50mb file (my latest RPG game).

http://files.winterwolves.com/games/PSDemo.exe -> it's using maxCDN but in the past 2 days I'm getting speed lower than my SHARED HOSTING at hostgator!!!

which is: http://www.macgames.biz/games/PSDemo.exe in case you want to compare it.

Outside peak hours works OK, but that's obvious :) I need max speed when US people are awake and playing, not early morning or late night!
Nope fast here from Australia at least

winterwolves = 1098KB/s
http://vbtechsupport.com/maxcdn/speedtest/020311/winterwolves1.png

macgames = 527KB/s
http://vbtechsupport.com/maxcdn/speedtest/020311/macgames1.png

And very soon browsers will start having more features to make websites load faster and countries will start having faster internet connections and so on. CDN will die pretty soon.

most stupid answer i ever seen in this forum :D:D:D:D what makes you to think compare browser with internet connection

yes from australia is fast. But is not as important as US for me :)
anyway ticket sent 2 days ago and no reply yet...

maybe routing issues for you as this is from my US based VPS server

wget http://files.winterwolves.com/games/PSDemo.exe
--16:25:21-- http://files.winterwolves.com/games/PSDemo.exe
=> `PSDemo.exe'
Resolving files.winterwolves.com... 72.21.81.63
Connecting to files.winterwolves.com|72.21.81.63|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 49,696,711 (47M) [application/x-msdownload]

100%[==>] 49,696,711 9.25M/s ETA 00:00

16:25:26 (8.83 MB/s) - `PSDemo.exe' saved [49696711/49696711]

wget http://www.macgames.biz/games/PSDemo.exe
--16:25:48-- http://www.macgames.biz/games/PSDemo.exe
=> `PSDemo.exe.1'
Resolving www.macgames.biz... 70.87.81.162
Connecting to www.macgames.biz|70.87.81.162|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 49,696,711 (47M) [application/octet-stream]

100%[==>] 49,696,711 2.54M/s ETA 00:00

16:26:13 (1.92 MB/s) - `PSDemo.exe.1' saved [49696711/49696711]

can always bug them on twitter http://twitter.com/maxcdn hehe

The speed you see is from my new edgecast CDN ;) I've already switched now.

Oh i see.. another cdn for me to try out :) What's there pricing like ?

There's one thing I don't get it. I have it pull from my server origin, but some files are available in some servers only! I use SSH to login on some of my US servers to check speed and found out this :(

For example I have:
http://files.winterwolves.com/games/LAODemo.exe
http://files.winterwolves.com/games/PSDemo.exe
first one works on server A, but not server B. Second instead works on server B, but not server A.

How is that posible ??

What did you mean by available in some servers only? Some servers = Edgecast?

No, any random server. Actually I just tried from my HOME NETWORK, and on two different PC I get different result. I really am astonished, I don't know what's going on!! :|

No, any random server. Actually I just tried from my HOME NETWORK, and on two different PC I get different result. I really am astonished, I don't know what's going on!! :|
maybe need to fix up domain dns http://dnscheck.pingdom.com/?domain=winterwolves.com ???

I see only some warnings ? Before using maxCDN was working fine anyway, so I don't understand... and also the small files like images/css works, only those big files don't.

I use MaxCDN, never had any slowness issues. However, I can't test for your file as it's redirecting me for some reason.

Did you try opening a support ticket with them?

I think is a mistake in my DNS configuration :( I'm not much expert honestly...

I think is a mistake in my DNS configuration :( I'm not much expert honestly...

Probably the whole slowness thing is a DNS issue, don't you think? I've dealt with that before... So I could give you a hand if you like. However, if you submit a ticket with MaxCDN, you WILL get good support.

I submitted a ticked and got a reply after two days...
And no, the slowness thing wasn't a DNS issue before, since DNS was working fine with maxcdn. It was really server slowness.

LOL right, now this is getting crazy.
On my home PC, using firefox/IE/chrome (ANY BROWSER) the file redirects to a searchdiscovered.com page.
I tried installing cygwin, I use Wget from THE SAME PC that couldn't find the file with browser, and works!!!!!!!!
$ wget http://files.winterwolves.com/games/LAODemo.exe
--2011-03-03 14:03:43-- http://files.winterwolves.com/games/LAODemo.exe
Resolving files.winterwolves.com (files.winterwolves.com)... 93.184.221.133
Connecting to files.winterwolves.com (files.winterwolves.com)|93.184.221.133|:80
... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 30296800 (29M) [application/x-msdownload]
Saving to: `LAODemo.exe'

0% [ ] 174,280 76.5K/s
(ignore the speed, is my home pc so is very slow connection).

Now I really don't understand how this can happen ?

OK SO: I emptied the browser cache (firefox, chrome, IE) and now works!!!!!!! it was the browser cache, crazy...

Just a short post to inform that MaxCDN explained the problem, they had an HW failure. They even offered me to keep using the bandwidth after refunding me, so I still think they're a good service and might use them again in future :)

Ah thanks for the update :)