Any local CDN's?

[guest2013-1]

Wondering if you guys knew about any local CDN's? All I find is a bunch of doo-hickey-mc-bob when looking for CDN's in SA on google

 

[moklet]

I think www.akamai.com are the only one's with a presence in ZA

 

[ambo]

Wondering if you guys knew about any local CDN's?

There are a number... but you won't find details about them on google

 

[moklet]

There are a number... but you won't find details about them on google

So tell use more if you know of them

 

[ambo]

So tell use more if you know of them

If I told you i'd have to kill you...

 

[moklet]

If I told you i'd have to kill you...

Sorry why bother to respond to this thread then if you have no usefull info

 

[guest2013-1]

Sorry why bother to respond to this thread then if you have no usefull info

Cause his e-penis needed a boost

 

[ambo]

Cause his e-penis needed a boost

What was the point of your initial question?

Did you want to know if more content is moving local or are you looking for a service provider to use?

If its the former - then I can confirm: heavy media content is being hosted from local servers. If it is the latter... then phone akamai

 

[kilos]

I think www.akamai.com are the only one's with a presence in ZA

e751.d.akamaiedge.net 84.53.187.51 is a local server
if you ping download2.vmware.com & download3.vmware.com

 

[guest2013-1]

What was the point of your initial question?

Did you want to know if more content is moving local or are you looking for a service provider to use?

If its the former - then I can confirm: heavy media content is being hosted from local servers. If it is the latter... then phone akamai

I assume you know a CDN is not the Canadian Dollar. It's a content distribution network.

Meaning, I load my files on there (all my static images or programs people can download from my site) and instead of using my site's bandwidth, they use the CDN's... and the CDN then serves this material locally (depending on how far their reach is)

So if I host my server locally, and someone in China wants to download my 1 gig porn library, they do so local to China because the CDN has a presence there.

Back to my initial question:

Wondering if you guys knew about any local CDN's?

The idea behind this is to get a CDN to distribute the files for me (as described in the scenario above) however, not necessarily internationally (even though it would benefit people from overseas, my initial aim is local content)

This has several affects on the speed of my website and produces a lot more cached material decreasing the load times and the bandwidth used for local material. Someone with the infrastructure then serves these files for me and I tax my server a lot less being able to then increase the number of hits I can get per day with the least cost due to me.

Because CDN's also get cached by proxy servers, I felt it's the natural progression for a Web 2.0 type project deployed without having to invest heavily in server farms and bandwidth from the onset of the project.

Thus coming full circle back to my original question:

Wondering if you guys knew about any local CDN's?

Obviously you do not know of any CDN's that produce content locally, nor can you be any help within this regard as a simple question seems to confuse you too much to muster up any kind of decent response. So then when confronted with it, the obvious reason must be that your post count is too low and you have nothing better to do than to not contribute positively on a very simple question. Hence, your e-penis needed some growth and be stroked by several others to make your self-worth boost a little to the point where you don't feel like a total tool for not knowing the answer to the question you originally tried to answer in a sarcastic manner...

The End

 

[RSkeens]

Looking to do a killer webapp, AcidRaZor? I don't think there is one available locally that can hold a candle to the ones overseas (that should be no surprise). Also quite surprised by some of the answers in this thread.

The last one I saw configured was a very slick custom Apache module to integrate with the CDN that also helps with certain scripts.

 

[guest2013-1]

Looking to do a killer webapp, AcidRaZor? I don't think there is one available locally that can hold a candle to the ones overseas (that should be no surprise). Also quite surprised by some of the answers in this thread.

Yes but I'm not necessarily ruling out international CDN's either. If I can find one that serves locally as well it would be brilliant. Currently looking into Akamai but I'm probably not going to be able to generate as much traffic as Blizzard would so not sure how their pricing would be for someone small

 

[RSkeens]

Yes but I'm not necessarily ruling out international CDN's either. If I can find one that serves locally as well it would be brilliant. Currently looking into Akamai but I'm probably not going to be able to generate as much traffic as Blizzard would so not sure how their pricing would be for someone small

There are a number that charge per gigabyte - but I haven't used them and can't comment on those. Some of them only cater for video / audio, media, etc.

 

[ambo]

Obviously you do not know of any CDN's that produce content locally, nor can you be any help within this regard as a simple question seems to confuse you too much to muster up any kind of decent response.

You are not going to see any significant benefit doing content distribution within our borders. The vast majority of Internet access backhauls into JHB and most of the major peering is happening in JHB. (although CINX is growing quickly)

Placing servers though out the country would mostly be a waste of money and probably cost your more than buying a properly spec'ed service on one server. If you really think that you are going to be overloading a single server then have a chat to hetzner - they have a load-balancing solution which this site runs on. Failing that I can put you in touch with some clever network engineers who will gladly build you a solution - at a price.

The only CDN I know of that is distributed locally is mirror.ac.za and there was some serious cash put into that system.

 

[guest2013-1]

You are not going to see any significant benefit doing content distribution within our borders. The vast majority of Internet access backhauls into JHB and most of the major peering is happening in JHB. (although CINX is growing quickly)

Placing servers though out the country would mostly be a waste of money and probably cost your more than buying a properly spec'ed service on one server. If you really think that you are going to be overloading a single server then have a chat to hetzner - they have a load-balancing solution which this site runs on. Failing that I can put you in touch with some clever network engineers who will gladly build you a solution - at a price.

The only CDN I know of that is distributed locally is mirror.ac.za and there was some serious cash put into that system.

Even though that might be a form of CDN, it's mostly used for educational purposes (to distribute free open source programs) and does not really cater for commercial business...

As for your (incorrectly) assumed idea that I'd like several servers within the border of South Africa to distribute the content, please refer to my reply to you earlier where I explained what a CDN is.

Essentially I'll only need one presence within South Africa, be it in JHB, CPT or Durban, it really does not matter where the traffic comes from, as long as it is served on a CDN locally (and available internationally).

I almost started going into the more technical areas of why using a CDN gives you more bang for your buck but you obviously do not (or will not) understand the benefits of using something like that and (and I'm willing to bet cold hard cash, you're a techie) would rather suggest a pricey load-balancing server based solution.

Screw it... here goes (even if it falls on deaf ears) If you have 100mb on 1 server serving a 1 meg file for download. Your maximum throughput on that would only be 10mb/s. Now assuming you're downloading it off of a 4mbps ADSL line, and that, at 90% speed, will keep the server busy at least 2.2 seconds for 1 download. This server can then only cater for 22 simultaneous downloads which would have an impact on the speed the server can process and send out web requests for the website.

Having a load balanced solution might be the answer, but how does having 5 different servers to upgrade the capacity at which I can serve a 1mb file help me in keeping down my costs?

If I have a website on a decent racked server, it can take many more hits than it normally would under strain of the file download happening if I were using a CDN who has the infrastructure already and invoices me for bandwidth used.

mirror.ac.za... are you a student? That will explain even more...

 

[frozt01100101]

Hi. Good to meet you. Now that we've put the formalities aside, to business..

Even though that might be a form of CDN, it's mostly used for educational purposes (to distribute free open source programs) and does not really cater for commercial business...

So, your first assumption of open source software only being used for educational purposes...well, do you know the saying "assume makes an ass out of you and me"? There are plenty of businesses who run businesses entirely based on Linux/Open Source architectures. The benefit of having a local repository is, on a cost level, absolutely phenomenal and the good which entities like IS and TENET do for the people who *do* use these mirrors is extremely highly valued.

As for your (incorrectly) assumed idea that I'd like several servers within the border of South Africa to distribute the content, please refer to my reply to you earlier where I explained what a CDN is.

CDN: Content Delivery/Distribution Network. Wikipedia definition citation below:

A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a system of computers containing copies of data, placed at various points in a network so as to maximize bandwidth for access to the data from clients throughout the network. A client accesses a copy of the data near to the client, as opposed to all clients accessing the same central server, thereby causing a bottleneck near that server.

So, a bunch of "servers", "distributed" within the "network". A "local CDN" would then, logically, be a bunch of servers distributed within a local network. That local network would most probably be locations such as SAIX, IS, GamCo, Posix, IMPOL or similar hosters. Datacenters that have connectivity which is reachable on local-only circuits. Why distributed? To alleviate a connection bottleneck which might arise from using only a single hoster.

Essentially I'll only need one presence within South Africa, be it in JHB, CPT or Durban, it really does not matter where the traffic comes from, as long as it is served on a CDN locally (and available internationally).

Well then you just buy international connectivity alongside the local connectivity for the servers on which you build your CDN.

I almost started going into the more technical areas of why using a CDN gives you more bang for your buck but you obviously do not (or will not) understand the benefits of using something like that and (and I'm willing to bet cold hard cash, you're a techie) would rather suggest a pricey load-balancing server based solution.

I'm fairly certain ambo understands the advantages of both situations, as well as how a load-balancer solution could be necessitated in a CDN scenario (a limited amount of internet-visible IPs, for instance, where you have multiple servers behind the balancer for reasons of load distribution as well as failover redundancy).

Screw it... here goes (even if it falls on deaf ears) If you have 100mb on 1 server serving a 1 meg file for download. Your maximum throughput on that would only be 10mb/s. Now assuming you're downloading it off of a 4mbps ADSL line, and that, at 90% speed, will keep the server busy at least 2.2 seconds for 1 download. This server can then only cater for 22 simultaneous downloads which would have an impact on the speed the server can process and send out web requests for the website.

No, your maximum throughput would be as fast as your hardware could possibly serve it up. If the file was in memory and not on some filesystem on a heavily fragmented drive (in a case where the filesystem which you use does actually fragment) or on a drive with really slow seek times, then it would get served directly from memory. A quick online search tells me that the bandwidth of DDR2-800 RAM (a likely choice of RAM, still fairly well-priced and easy to use en-mass for building cheap, large servers) is 6400 MB/s. That means that you would need 512 individual 100Mbps connections to max out the bandwidth between your RAM controller and your network interface (100Mbps = 12MB/s, ref: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100Mbps). That's assuming your PCI bus can even handle that sort of throughput. But if you were to access that file from disk, that's a wholly different story. Also just as an aside, many (server?) operating systems cache recently-opened files so a buffered read of them is much quicker. Which translates to a much quicker re-server time on the next request for that file. And if you're at the point where you're running a CDN, the chances of files being re-requested are relatively high.

Having a load balanced solution might be the answer, but how does having 5 different servers to upgrade the capacity at which I can serve a 1mb file help me in keeping down my costs?

See above points, probably covers this question in consequence.

If I have a website on a decent racked server, it can take many more hits than it normally would under strain of the file download happening if I were using a CDN who has the infrastructure already and invoices me for bandwidth used.

Again, see above points.

mirror.ac.za... are you a student? That will explain even more...

Except for the derision you display here, this remark is basically pointless.

Now, if you meant you were looking for space on a CDN that's already locally established, perhaps you should indicate that. Akamai have a local access node hosted at Internet Solutions as of some time ago, and you might find it a good idea to contact them to ask for pricing.

 

[guest2013-1]

Hi. Good to meet you. Now that we've put the formalities aside, to business..

Hello

So, your first assumption of open source software only being used for educational purposes...well, do you know the saying "assume makes an ass out of you and me"? There are plenty of businesses who run businesses entirely based on Linux/Open Source architectures. The benefit of having a local repository is, on a cost level, absolutely phenomenal and the good which entities like IS and TENET do for the people who *do* use these mirrors is extremely highly valued.

Not at all, just that our little mutual friend indicated that mirror.ac.za is a CDN (which it is) but that I won't be able to use it as it forms part of TENET, which is a non-commercial entity... aka... and I quote directly: "Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa"

So you can appreciate why I used the word "educational" in that context. I'm running a business. Not a non-profit establishment able to leverage off of their CDN (according to their criteria)

CDN: Content Delivery/Distribution Network. Wikipedia definition citation below:

So, a bunch of "servers", "distributed" within the "network". A "local CDN" would then, logically, be a bunch of servers distributed within a local network. That local network would most probably be locations such as SAIX, IS, GamCo, Posix, IMPOL or similar hosters. Datacenters that have connectivity which is reachable on local-only circuits. Why distributed? To alleviate a connection bottleneck which might arise from using only a single hoster.


Well then you just buy international connectivity alongside the local connectivity for the servers on which you build your CDN.

If you cared to read my original responses (and the other, correctly assumed, answers) before you jumped to the defense of your not-so-enlightened friend, you would have noticed that I never intended to build my own CDN, but in fact leverage off of existing CDN's (networks that are in the commercial business and not an educational institution)

I'm fairly certain ambo understands the advantages of both situations, as well as how a load-balancer solution could be necessitated in a CDN scenario (a limited amount of internet-visible IPs, for instance, where you have multiple servers behind the balancer for reasons of load distribution as well as failover redundancy).

And I'm fairly certain he does not, otherwise he wouldn't have responded to this thread as he clearly can't tell the difference and with suggestions like getting load balancing servers up and "pointing me to his people" can be quite annoying when I know what a server is capable of and what default speeds are like in the real world... especially costs associated with something like this...

No, your maximum throughput would be as fast as your hardware could possibly serve it up. If the file was in memory and not on some filesystem on a heavily fragmented drive (in a case where the filesystem which you use does actually fragment) or on a drive with really slow seek times, then it would get served directly from memory. A quick online search tells me that the bandwidth of DDR2-800 RAM (a likely choice of RAM, still fairly well-priced and easy to use en-mass for building cheap, large servers) is 6400 MB/s. That means that you would need 512 individual 100Mbps connections to max out the bandwidth between your RAM controller and your network interface (100Mbps = 12MB/s, ref: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100Mbps). That's assuming your PCI bus can even handle that sort of throughput. But if you were to access that file from disk, that's a wholly different story. Also just as an aside, many (server?) operating systems cache recently-opened files so a buffered read of them is much quicker. Which translates to a much quicker re-server time on the next request for that file. And if you're at the point where you're running a CDN, the chances of files being re-requested are relatively high.

The real world speed of a 100Mbps nic is unfortunately not 12Mb/s, but close to 10Mb/s (perhaps 11Mb/s). This is from my experience having setup and administered 3 web servers in data centers in the US (ThePlanet),UK (Rackspace) and South Africa, using Hetzner. 2 out of the 3 are racked Dell 2950 servers and have been administrating servers (and programming web applications) for a long time... so I know where bottlenecks are, what the limit is of the hardware versus my own programming and how I can squeeze every drop out of it possible without having to spend thousands on something I could have got for a lot cheaper...

The bottleneck I indicated was not between RAM and NIC but between NIC and end-user. I thought I made it pretty clear that 22 simultaneous downloads will max out the NIC's capacity in bandwidth TO the user. Techie much?

I'm well aware that between RAM and NIC there are no issues, and with a racked server setup with a nice RAID configuration, the seek time is all but minuscule for a 1mb file

Now, if you meant you were looking for space on a CDN that's already locally established, perhaps you should indicate that. Akamai have a local access node hosted at Internet Solutions as of some time ago, and you might find it a good idea to contact them to ask for pricing.

Bingo. If you bothered to read anything (I feel like I'm repeating myself) instead of trying to defend a person (which you are) then you would've noticed this was my initial question. With your little friend tainting the OP to the point where even you are confused about my initial question, I thought I was pretty clear with my OP. And so did several others with responses less-e-penis like than your friend gave me. "I have to kill you if I tell you". That's not how we do things in this sub section of the mybb forums.

And... this brings us to the end of my reply. And again, I'll put cold hard cash on this betting you're a techie, and not anything else that might lead to inspire you to be a little more thoughtful on how the internet, servers and web applications work in the real world and the cost at running those (unless you have very deep pockets, then your e-penis just stayed the same in length)... I hope it was worth defending your friend

 

[AndrewAlston]

Akamai is present in South Africa, if you need contact details for them, let me know.

Cacheboy CDN is also present in South Africa, though that generally only does opensource content (VLC, Firefox etc), again, if you need contact details, let me know

I don't know of any others unfortunately. I also need to explicitly state that I am involved directly in neither of these.

Thanks

Andrew

 

[guest2013-1]

Akamai is present in South Africa, if you need contact details for them, let me know.

Cacheboy CDN is also present in South Africa, though that generally only does opensource content (VLC, Firefox etc), again, if you need contact details, let me know

I don't know of any others unfortunately. I also need to explicitly state that I am involved directly in neither of these.

Thanks

Andrew

Thank you Andrew, if you don't mind posting those contact details here for their South African sales team (if one exists) it would be great. Otherwise, if it's just their normal contact details, you can either post it here or pm me, I'll re-post it and take responsibility for any repercussions.

 

[AndrewAlston]

Thank you Andrew, if you don't mind posting those contact details here for their South African sales team (if one exists) it would be great. Otherwise, if it's just their normal contact details, you can either post it here or pm me, I'll re-post it and take responsibility for any repercussions.

Dropped you a pm, can't post the details I have publically since they aren't exactly the sales team