Google app engine & CDN

Question

When using Google app engine is there any benefit to use a CDN if i wanted my file resources as closer to users?

Answer 1

Certainly. Although App Engine may cache your static content close to users, it doesn't guarantee it will do so, and it won't cache your dynamic content for you. Using a CDN is as viable an option with App Engine as it is with any other platform.

Answer 2

Well, it is all about your budget, geography and profiling. Google app engine is free, and if properly configured it serves your content very nicely to various locations around the world. Many people actually use the app engine as a CDN! (see here, here and here)

Here is a blog post comparing the performance of the app-engine, a commercial CDN and no CDN at all for hosting a static 1MB zipped file: http://blog.sallarp.com/google-app-engine-cdn/

Try this free service (from a CDN...) to see how your app engine application performs: http://www.testyourhost.com/ Here is another test site I've used: http://www.watchmouse.com/en/

So, depending on where your site is geographically located, where your users are located and what your needs are, you need to profile the performance of the app engine and see if it is good enough. Will you get better performance from a commercial CDN? Most likely. But do you need it?

Answer 3

Now you can also dinamically cache static assets (or the whole website) with Google App Engine and this open source Phyton script:

http://code.google.com/p/cirruxcache/

And, of course, if you have budget and/or pretty big requirements, then go Akamai & co.