CDN and Flickr

[Sepu]

Hi all, this is my test result:
http://www.webpagetest.org/result/111006...use_of_cdn

in my site, i use Flickr to host my photos, why flickr is not a cdn?

Thanks!

[pmeenan]

Flickr doesn't use a CDN. From the traceroutes it looks like they host somewhere on the east coast of the US. It probably doesn't make sense for something like flickr to use a CDN since there are SO many photos and such a long tail that the majority of the visits would end up going back to their main storage anyway.

Traceroutes:

US East (30ms): http://www.webpagetest.org/result/111006_3G_1T9E0/
US West (100ms): http://www.webpagetest.org/result/111006_YS_1T9E8/
Europe (110-120ms): http://www.webpagetest.org/result/111006_3X_1T9CG/
Singapore (250-270ms): http://www.webpagetest.org/result/111006_P9_1T9D5/
Australia (200ms): http://www.webpagetest.org/result/111006_F7_1T9DQ/

[Sepu]

Thank you very much for response, so I can't do nothing for this problem. What do you suggest?

[pmeenan]

You don't necessarily need a CDN if your end users are close to their servers but if you DO want to use a CDN for the photos you have a couple of choices:

1 - Move the photos used on the site off of flickr (keep them local to the server and serve them through a CDN that is used for the site itself)

2 - You can put a CDN in front of flickr (I don't really recommend this since you wouldn't have a way to make sure it only serves YOUR photos since it doesn't looke like the paths are unique).