Hi, dose any one know of any FREE CDN service for images and css etc.
Our servers are located in Europe, for visitors in USA images take more time. Use of CDN will benefit it but a CDN costs a lot so is there any free way out?
No free way that I’m aware of but SimpleCDN is really cheap with no contracts and they have a free trial: http://simplecdn.net/
Depending on how much traffic you get and how many files you’re talking about they could end up being pretty close to free (particularly since you get a $15 credit to start).
I’ve been debating using them for WebPagetest but the vast majority of what I serve is dynamic and there would be minimal benefit for the few static images that I have.
What I’d really love to see would be for someone like Google get into the market for a mirror CDN with their apps platform. Would give them a chance to put their money where their mouth is for making the web faster 
-Pat
Yes, i also think google should provide such service. I also came across http://www.coralcdn.org/ which is free cdn service. To use this we need to add .nyud.net in our url, and that resource will be served from cdn. will write about this in detail later.
Any ways thanks for letting know about simple cdn.
FWIW, last time I checked coral wasn’t really good for performance, it is more for absorbing a huge traffic surge (like a slashdotting). I don’t think they use geo-targeting for latency reduction (one of the main reasons to use a CDN for performance). More of a round-robin DNS/host name hash to load balance for volume. Things may have changed since then but make sure to be careful and look into it before deploying on it.
-Pat
Using simplecdn did not give any advantage as it was serving images from only one location in US. This gave some advantage to US visitors but for UK visitors it was not good.
Something doesn’t sound right about that. SimpleCDN should have several PoP’s across the US and Europe (I’ve seen 10+ and 23+ in various Google searches but their site doesn’t say for sure). Sounds like there was a problem with the config or the testing.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that they perform well (and I don’t know for sure that they do) but serving from a single location is not something you should ever see happen for a CDN.
-Pat
It was also disappointing for me, I sent them email regarding issues but never got reply, so it left bad impression on me.
I really liked the price and mirror bucket, but they should try to reply emails.
Have you tried MaxCDN? I just found out about them recently and they seem to be VERY well priced and incredibly easy to set up. After looking at it I decided to move WebPagetest over to using them for the static files (just waiting for the DNS changes to roll out and then I’ll make it live).
They make it REALLY easy to use by pulling the files directly from your server on-demand so you just have to change the path in your code and it “just works”. Looks like they also have plugins for some CMS systems (wordpress, etc).
As far as locations go, it looks like they have the US and Europe fairly well covered with Asia on the way.
-Pat
thanks. I will look at it
hey thanks for all the info. i will try it!
[size=xx-small]search engine optimization, web solution[/size]
Worth mentioning CloudFlare on this page. Essentially a free CDN service, though not quite…
Curious why you’re saying that we’re not free & not quite(we do provide free caching for static content).
I’m using Cloudflare’s Free and Pro (for $20 only) for some of my sites and I am impressed with how it improves my site and protect it from possible DDOS. I got security and CDN in a very affordable cost. Most of my sites uses the free service but I recommend PRO if you’re serious about security and speed.