Speed up websites for overseas (Africa) with CDN
table of contents
This is Haraoka from Beyond.
This time we will talk about speeding up overseas sites using CDN.
The consultation we received from a customer was that a website running on a server in Japan was extremely slow when viewed in a certain African country.
It is true that the distance between Japan and Africa is very long, so the response time will be delayed accordingly.
(Quoted below)
Regarding the relationship between communication speed and communication distance
In the TCP/IP communication method used on the Internet,
the next data is sent only after confirming that the communication partner has received a response correctly.
Therefore, if the communication distance is far, it will take longer to confirm the reply than if it is close, and
it will take more time to send the next data.
Therefore, the longer the communication distance, the longer it takes to send all the data, and the slower the communication speed.
http://www.bbiq.jp/members/improvement/speed/distance/
we adopted a method to improve website response by using a CDN so that content can be accessed from as close a location as possible
(Quoted below)
What is CDN (Content Delivery Network)?
CDN is an abbreviation for Content Delivery Network.
Content is accessed
through servers (CDN distribution platform) spread all over the world. This is a mechanism for efficiently distributing content from the server closest to the end user. http://www.cdnetworks.co.jp/about/
Check access speed from overseas
Use the following site to find out how fast you can access from overseas.
■WEBPAGETEST
http://www.webpagetest.org/
This site is quite useful as a website debugging tool, but
this site also allows you to check display speeds from numerous locations overseas.
This time we are accessing from Africa, so
Rose Hill, Mauritius (Chrome)
and access, you will get the following results.
*The following are access results for our website beyondjapan.com.
As expected, access from Africa is extremely slow on domestic servers.
That's why we use CDN.
Check CDNs available in Africa
There are various CDN services, but
the following sites can be helpful in finding a CDN based in Africa.
It's mainly used overseas, but I think it's quite useful because you can compare CDNs in various ways.
■CDNPlanet
https://www.cdnplanet.com/
- QUANTIL 5 locations
https://www.cdnplanet.com/cdns/quantil/
Djibouti Djibouti
Kenya Mombasa
Madagascar Antananarivo
Mauritius Port Louis
South Africa Cape Town - Johannesburg - Cloudflare 4 locations
https://www.cdnplanet.com/cdns/cloudflare/
South Africa Johannesburg
Kenya Mombasa
Angola Luanda
Djibouti Djibouti - CDNetworks 3 locations
https://www.cdnplanet.com/cdns/cdnetworks/
South Africa Cape Town - Johannesburg
Egypt Cairo
Tanzania Dar es Salaam - Level 3 3 locations
https://www.cdnplanet.com/cdns/level3/
South Africa Cape Town - Johannesburg
Kenya Mombasa
Djibouti Djibouti - CacheFly 2 locations
https://www.cdnplanet.com/cdns/cachefly/
South Africa Johannesburg
Egypt Cairo - Fastly 1 location
https://www.cdnplanet.com/cdns/fastly/
South Africa Johannesburg
QUANTIL has the most locations out of 5.
, Cloudflare seems to be a good option as it costs a minimum of 1000$
That's what I thought, but there was something unexpected about it.
That's the Akamai of the world.
The details of Akamai are not disclosed on this site, but
■Akamai
https://www.cdnplanet.com/cdns/akamai/
As you can see below, there seem to be over 30 locations.
http://wwwnui.akamai.com/gnet/globe/index.htmlIt's
on a different level.
At Akamai, we had examples of improved response in Africa as shown below, so we were able to easily convince our customers and implement the system smoothly.
https://www.akamai.com/jp/ja/our-customers/customer-stories-carview.jsp
Change DNS server
After the introduction, the response improved dramatically, but there was still a problem with slow DNS lookups, so we
moved the domain that was set on the domestic DNS server to Amazon Route 53, and the response improved even more.
Amazon Route 53 is highly recommended, as it is forwarded from locations around the world to the location closest to the access source, so you can expect a fast response, and the price is low.
https://aws.amazon.com/jp/route53/
These are examples of CDN usage for overseas.
If you are having trouble with the response of your overseas site, please feel free to contact Beyond! !