Managing a CDN with 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?
