Faster arXiv with Fastly (opens in new tab)

(blog.arxiv.org)

98 pointskickdaddy2y ago10 comments

10 comments

Good promo for Fastly! Fastly is a great company - effectively they're Varnish-as-a-Service, which is really a non-trivial SaaS. I hope this brings in some business for them.

alberth2y ago

I read an analogy once and its that:

Fastly == Linux (ability to changes lots of things to tailor to your exact needs)

Cloudflare == macOS (prepackaged to work for most general users, limited config)

karmakaze2y ago

I've used both and wish Fastly had a mode where a higher level specification could be used for most/simple cases. It's been quite a while since I've used it so may be a capability it has since added.

1 more reply

no_wizard2y ago

I feel like Cloudflare is becoming more of a cloud computing platform with a focus on global "instant" delivery of services than a CDN company.

Of course, they're also a really competent CDN company, but they're really leveraging all their experience in that domain to bolster up their compute offerings.

1 more reply

boiler_up8002y ago

Good job Fastly. I would love to see metrics on bandwidth consumed from Arxiv. I always wonder how it and services like package repositories are able to provide their downloads for free.

anildash2y ago

That's a cool idea! Arxiv is a member of our Fast Forward program at Fastly, which helps a lot of open source/open web projects, and we've enabled other projects to share that kind of data in the past, so maybe we can figure out how to help them do that too. (One example is Kubernetes; you can see their live request data on our developer site. https://developer.fastly.com/ )

progbits2y ago

Love how the bandwidth spikes ~10x from HH:59 to HH:00. Looks like people still write crons with manually set trigger times that align on the hour, rather than randomly spreading them out.

upbeat_general2y ago

This is such great news, I've been annoyed with slow arXiv loads for a while and happy to hopefully see it fixed!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

10 comments

erulabs2y ago

Good promo for Fastly! Fastly is a great company - effectively they're Varnish-as-a-Service, which is really a non-trivial SaaS. I hope this brings in some business for them.

alberth2y ago

I read an analogy once and its that:

Fastly == Linux (ability to changes lots of things to tailor to your exact needs)

Cloudflare == macOS (prepackaged to work for most general users, limited config)

karmakaze2y ago

I've used both and wish Fastly had a mode where a higher level specification could be used for most/simple cases. It's been quite a while since I've used it so may be a capability it has since added.

1 more reply

no_wizard2y ago

I feel like Cloudflare is becoming more of a cloud computing platform with a focus on global "instant" delivery of services than a CDN company.

Of course, they're also a really competent CDN company, but they're really leveraging all their experience in that domain to bolster up their compute offerings.

1 more reply

boiler_up8002y ago

Good job Fastly. I would love to see metrics on bandwidth consumed from Arxiv. I always wonder how it and services like package repositories are able to provide their downloads for free.

anildash2y ago

progbits2y ago

Love how the bandwidth spikes ~10x from HH:59 to HH:00. Looks like people still write crons with manually set trigger times that align on the hour, rather than randomly spreading them out.

upbeat_general2y ago

This is such great news, I've been annoyed with slow arXiv loads for a while and happy to hopefully see it fixed!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse