Glen Turner wrote:
It depends what you mean by "appropriate". It may not be "least cost" or "closest", and that can be a rude shock when the CDN traffic suddenly costs you A$5/GB (delivered from the US by undersea cable) rather than $0 (delivered from an in-country peer).
In some cases this may be true. However, many of the CDN's I've talked to will happily update which POP my network talks to. Is automatic detection perfect? Probably not. That is why they support manual correction. Their goal is to get you the best connectivity, and they usually don't have a problem, in my experience, working with a provider to ensure the right IP ranges go to the best POP.
DNS is the wrong answer, simply because there's no way for the user to express *their* policy. But since there no CDN support in HTTP.....
See above. It appears I have no problem expressing my policy to CDN's. Corporate world often uses views to express external and internal policy. Unfortunately, it's not that easy for the CDN, so they do the best that they can, and they correct when it's important enough for a provider to say "hey, this pop isn't the best for my network!" Jack