On Fri, 25 Sep 2015 13:39:22 -0400, Clay Curtis said:
exclusively. I have dealt with cases in which a CDN responded to a client request with a resource on another continent, thus having to cross an ocean and adding considerable latency, when there was a POP on that continent.
And what was the root cause for the CDN to misfire that badly? I hereby submit the hypothesis that if a CDN's data tables are so dorked up that they're serving the data from the wrong continent, adding physical location probably won't help, and may make things even worse. (For instance, consider a location in Alaska, where the *closest* CDN may be one in the northwest part of Canada - specifically put there because the network is at the wrong end of a satellite link. You almost certainly want to skip that one and hit one in Seattle or someplace similar....)
If the CDN could have LOC information that is more accurate/updated, it could allow them to make a better decision and direct a client to a resource that is physically closer.
You don't want the one that's physically closest. You want the one that's netwise closest.