Q: Perf of "Pull" CDN for very low-traffic sites?

Web Performance Optimization Discussions
1

Dear all,

I just visited the forums for the first time (after using the testing tools many times), and I must say this is fantastic. Lots of good info here.

OK, since this is almost the unofficial MaxCDN support forum :slight_smile: I have a little question. I would especially like input from current CDN users who are in a similar situation as mine.

I’m setting up a website. Initially it will have rather low traffic, lets say less than 10,000 visits per week. My users come from all over the world. Ideally I would like to use MaxCDN with a “pull zone” for integration with my site.

I could also use “content push”, but pull is just a lot easier to integrate with my workflow, upload of new content etc.

But … I worry that the CDN edge nodes will evict my content from their caches, much like a Squid proxy server will evict less used content to make room for hot content. As said, my site will at first have quite low traffic, so my content is infrequently accessed.

Is this a problem? What is the experience of other lower-traffic CDN users here?

Thank you,

2

well… you need to test it… id suggest flushing the cache(from max’s cpanel) and immediately run tests from various locations on webpagetest . Thatll show you the performance with cache miss. If you are ready to live with the fact that some of your users would have that experience, then go with pull…

3

I’d be surprised if with 10,000 visits per week your content was flushed. Make sure you have nice long-lived expiration headers on the objects so the CDN can do it’s job though.

MaxCDN’s panel has a report that will tell you the cache hit rate which is a good way to gauge the effectiveness. Even for some of my sites that hardly get any traffic I hardly ever see cache misses.

-Pat

4

Good answers! I have enough to go on now – thank you both. :slight_smile:

5

MaxCDN got the feature to choose either to push or pull content?

6

Yes, they have pull, push and streaming capabilities. I have only ever used pull though.