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CDN (=Content delivery network) or on premise

Posted on Modified on by Aleksandar Lazic

Today I want write down some lessons learned from my research about CDNs (=Content delivery network) for a high volume and high traffic site.

Current state

What does I mean with high volume and high traffic site, let’s take a moment to take a look to the statistics.

High Volume and Traffic

Requests (Total Hits): 492718245 => ~490 M
Traffic: 36.12 TB

I have researched on the internet for different CDNs which are able to handle this amount of traffic and does not have to high per month costs.

Requirements

  • Handle the current traffic and request rate
  • Low initial costs (~ 0-250 €)
  • Low monthly costs (~ 1000 €)
  • Fast switching between origin servers (= Loadbalancer)
  • Caching of Content

The candidates

This is not a complete list of all available CDNs in the world, it’s just what I have decided to go.

Research

Every candidate have a pricing page, except akamai.
Based on this pricing pages have I created a overview of the candidates.
This are my own observations and I’m open for freedback via any social media channel below.

netlify

I use netlify for several pages. In fact you read this blog on netlify ;-) The solution is rock solid and the setup to bring a site online very easy.

Based on the pro prices are the costs per month like ~ $ 18.7k

(492718245 / 500000 ) * $19 = ~ $ 18.723

Cloudflare

I decided to take a look into the cloudflare setup to see what I can get.

From my point of view are the following features necessary to have a high available setup.

At Load Balancing are first 500,000 request free, I need ~490 M
$5 for Load Balancing subscriptions
$10 for Geo Routing

At Rate Limiting are 10,000 request free I need ~490 M

I end up with this formula which looks pretty high.

(492718245-10000)*$0,05 = $24.635.412,25 ?!

stackpath/maxcdn

I have not used this CDN. The Price is from chat with support, I say thank you M. for your help.

$600 for the first 25TB
11,120GB x $0.02 = ~ $222 for the next 11.12TB
total (estimate) of about ~$822/mo

fastly

I have not used this CDN. Fastly have the best calculater from my point of view. You just need to go to the website put the numbers there and you got your price.

Thanks fastly for that easy answer to the cost question.

leaseweb

I have not used this CDN. Based on the LeaseWeb CDN page have I calculated the costs with this formula.

25000 = $ 499 (= Base price) 11000 = $ 330 (= Additional traffic) Total: $ 829

ovh

I have used the ovh server but not the CDN. Based on there CDN InfraStructure page is the 100 TB package the one which fits best for my requirements.

build your own cdn

I will calculate different hosting provider and compare the own CDN with the prices here. It is not easy to build your own CDN because you will need at least three Servers with accurate Bandwidth.

Finale table with prices

CDN Traffic Costs / Month Year
cloudflare Unknown $215 and some unknown costs $2,580
stackpath/maxcdn 36 TB ~ $822 ~ $9,864
fastly 36 TB ~ $3,650 ~ $43,800
netlify 36 TB ~ $18,723 ~ $224,676
leaseweb 36 TB ~ $829 ~ $9,948
ovh 100 TB ~ €714 ~ $8,568
own cdn 36 TB Unknown Unknown

My conclusion

In general are the CDNs very helpfully and solves the problem of single point of failure (=SPOF) in some cases are the costs not low.

I will now research how much a solution with on prem server costs.

I’m happy to receive any feedback via any social media channel below.

You can contact me for any further questions and orders