Managing a CDN with Carl Gustas

carl-gustas

“We’re not always in control of other people’s networks.”

CDN stands for content delivery network. A content delivery network is a system of distributed servers that delivers web pages and other web content. Without CDNs, the internet would be much slower, because CDNs function as a caching layer for most web resources.

Carl Gustas is an engineer at CacheFly, a popular content delivery network. He joins us today to discuss how CDNs work, and the different methods an engineer can use to take advantage of caching in a CDN.

Questions

  • What is a proxy server, and how is it relevant to a CDN?
  • Why is a first hit to a website painful whereas subsequent hits are not?
  • Does a CDN provide resilience from DDOS attacks?
  • Do you use containers in production?
  • What is the replication factor for my files on a CDN?
  • What are the craziest stories you have from managing a CDN for 10 years?

Links

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