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Location doesn't matter with anycast CDN

VPS Hosting by pablo 24 replies 3.6K views
pablo

Member OP

8 #1

Hot take wey: location is dead, anycast cdn killed it dead. All vps are equal now for static sites and small apps, change my mind wey

Seriously I run three wordpress blogs on Contabo singapore, Vultr Frankfurt, and Hetzner dallas. Same anycast cdn in front. Same TTFB wey. Same lighthouse score. Why pay premium for "premium location" when the edge does the work?

Gaming and realtime stuff yeah different story, I give you that. But for 90% of what we do here? Dead argument. Wey the money you save on cheap tier-3 you spend on better cdn tier. Math checks out.

Only time I felt location was when I tried to ssh into singapore from mexico city and the lag made me cry lol. But thats not user-facing wey! User sees cdn. User happy..

declarative or death
Carl

Member

Rack & Stack

#2

Pablo, you're missing power cost and transit pricing entirely.

  • Singapore power: $0.15/kWh vs Iowa at $0.07/kWh — that 2U EPYC Milan draws 280W under load, $210/year delta just on electricity
  • Trans-Pacific IP transit still runs $30-80/Mbps depending on commitment, versus $0.50-2 in Tier 1 US markets
  • Shipping a pallet of RAM to Jakarta costs 4x Frankfurt due to customs and air freight

Anycast masks latency, not economics. Your CDN bill subsidizes someone else's infrastructure asymmetry. "Equal" only at the surface.

visit twice: install and decom
pieter_rtm

Member

10 #3

Overstates edge cases.

As said, I operate anycast from 6 OVHcloud pops. Real numbers:

  • Cache hit ratio: 87-94% depending on asset type
  • Origin pull: still happens, and 180ms vs 15ms matters at scale
  • Bandwidth pricing: APAC origin 3.2x EU-west per TB

For static sites with 95%+ hit ratio? Agree with OP, location barely matters. For anything dynamic — even light PHP — origin latency is user-facing. Dry fact: you cannot CDN your database writes.

Containers before it was cool
PA

Member

#4

Anycast is just dns trickery with extra steps and your origin still drowns when the cache misses on a traffic spike

lucgone

Member

Le Baguette

#5

87% cache hit sounds generous for WordPress wey, most sites I see run 60-70

Vive la résistance... électrique
pieter_rtm

Member

3 #6
lucgone said:
87% cache hit sounds generous for WordPress wey, most sites I see run 60-70

Depends on plugin stack. Mine runs LiteSpeed + object cache + Cloudflare APO. Without APO I'd be at 70% too. With it, 94% on HTML.

But you're proving my point: OP's "location doesn't matter" only holds when your cache stack is perfect. Real WordPress is 60-70% as you say, and then origin latency walks in the door.

Containers before it was cool
lucgone

Member

Le Baguette

#7

60-70% is generous too for WooCommerce or any logged-in flow. Try 30-40%. Edge won't save you then.

CDN bills scale fast when origin pull is constant.

Vive la résistance... électrique
pablo

Member OP

#8
pieter_rtm said:
You cannot CDN your database writes

Wey this is the real talk. I feel you. But my blogs are 95% read, 5% comment. For that use case? Location is decoration.

When I ran a Woo store yeah, nightmare. Moved it to Vultr dallas near my supplier's API — https://www.vultr.com. Night and day. But that's not "location matters for everyone," that's "location matters for dynamic workloads."

Most people here running static or nearly-static. Let's not pretend they're all running write-heavy apps.

declarative or death
Doug

Member

New Jersey

#9

Following this. I'm on Contabo New York and Cloudflare Pro. Never thought about where the origin actually sits until now.

grabs popcorn, checks /r/drama
ben20

Member

#10

Terms of service angle: some CDNs restrict origin location in ways they don't advertise. Read the fine print on "acceptable origin regions" if you're doing the cheap-VM-far-away trick.

Not naming names. Read.

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