Company
Date Published
Author
Ryan Tomayko
Word count
1306
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Earlier this week, experiments began with using Amazon CloudFront as a CDN for serving static assets, alongside general asset delivery optimizations aimed at reducing page load times, especially for users outside the US. Performance is being measured globally using BrowserMob, which provides detailed insights into page load times by monitoring full page loads in real browsers. The shift to a single asset host from multiple hosts was tested, revealing that it stabilized page load times but did not drastically improve them, as multiple hosts can lead to varied response times and SSL handshake inefficiencies. CloudFront was implemented using Custom Origins, which allows for asset requests to be fetched and stored without transferring assets to an S3 bucket, despite some challenges like CloudFront ignoring query strings. Performance improvements were noted in places like Singapore, but results were mixed in the US and Europe, sparking further investigation into potential DNS resolution issues with BrowserMob. The experiment is ongoing, with plans to compare other CDNs before reaching a final decision.