nanog mailing list archives

Re: Traffic engineering and peering for CDNs


From: Tom Smyth <tom.smyth () wirelessconnect eu>
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2016 19:03:52 +0100

as far as im aware ... a friend of mine on INEX in Ireland said most cdns
use source ip of the DNS requests to determine which network to direct them
to ... so if you use you have your own resolver on  an ip address  in your
network range cdns can accurately determine what network the request is
comming from and determine what  ip address / what network that the cdn has
nearest to your network...

ff you use 3rd party  dns servers for your clients... you may not get an
optimal ip answer for your dns queries from the CDNS involved

I hope this helps

Tom Smyth

On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 6:53 PM, Mike Hammett <nanog () ics-il net> wrote:

Some rely on performance testing to the client's DNS resolver and if
they're not using on-net ones, they'll be directed to use a different CDN
node.




-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions
http://www.ics-il.com



Midwest Internet Exchange
http://www.midwest-ix.com


----- Original Message -----

From: "Graham Johnston" <johnstong () westmancom com>
To: "nanog () nanog org" <nanog () nanog org>
Sent: Monday, June 6, 2016 8:36:43 AM
Subject: Traffic engineering and peering for CDNs

Lately I have been putting in some effort to maximize our IX connections
by trying to work with the top 5-ish list of ASNs that still send us
traffic via a paid transit connection despite the fact that we are both
present on the same IX(s). In one case I missed the fact that one ASN
wasn't using the IXs route-servers, that's on me for not spotting that one.

Even with proper IX peering in place though it seems like some CDNs are
better at using the IX connections than others. ASN 15169 for instance does
an excellent job sending more than 99.99% of traffic via the IX connection;
thank you. While others only seem to manage to send 60 - 80% of traffic via
the IX. What I am not understanding about the respective CDN's network
wherein they don't send traffic to me through a consistent path? Is the
content coming from widely different places and rather than transport it
across their own network from a remote site they would rather hot-potato it
out a local transit connection? Are their transit costs so low that they
don't care about using an IX connection over transit unlike a small
operator like me? Is this just a non-obvious issue wherein they maybe just
can't originate enough of the traffic near the IX and therefore don't make
use of the IX connection, again a hot-potato phenomenon?

Secondly can someone explain to me why some CDNs want a gigabit or two of
traffic to be exchanged between our respective networks before they would
peer with me via a public IX? I totally get those kinds of thresholds
before engaging in a private interconnect but I don't understand the
reluctance with regard to a public IX, that they are already established
at. Is it again just a simple case of bandwidth economics that operate at a
different scale than I can comprehend?

I'm hoping the community can shed some light on this for me as I'm trying
to avoid grilling the operators that are working with me as I don't expect
those front line individuals to necessarily have a full view of the factors
at play.

Thanks,
Graham Johnston
Network Planner
Westman Communications Group
204.717.2829
johnstong () westmancom com<mailto:johnstong () westmancom com>
P think green; don't print this email.





-- 
Kindest regards,
Tom Smyth

Mobile: +353 87 6193172
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