Highwinds or MaxCDN

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Posted by coolnikin, 01-13-2011, 05:16 AM
vps.net is selling Highwinds for 0.5/GB , maxcdn is around 0.99/GB i am currently using maxcdn and its good, but i am looking to cut costs is highwinds at par with maxcdn ? with regards to network
Posted by adamcroshaw, 01-13-2011, 01:19 PM
Highwinds covers the US, Europe and Brazil really well. So I would consider where the majority of your clients are accessing your site from. If most of your clients are in the US and Europe I would say cutting cost would make a lot of sense. But if you need a bigger network I would stick with maxcdn.
Posted by pubcrawler, 01-13-2011, 01:32 PM
Unsure about Highwinds term - if you pay monthly with no roll over. MaxCDN is nice because your bought amount is good for 12 months. So if you buy 1TB and only use 500GB your next month won't be another $99 purchase as you still have more left over. That roll over is somewhat unique among CDNs. I use MaxCDN for CDN of traditional static content. Good for US and Europe, but not so for Asia as they currently have no servers operational in that region.
Posted by adamcroshaw, 01-13-2011, 01:39 PM
Sorry I just got some new info. This post should say... Highwinds covers the US, Europe and Brazil really well. So I would consider where the majority of your clients are accessing your site from. If most of your clients are in the US and Europe I would say cutting cost would make a lot of sense. You might want to ask MaxCDN about their special (1TB) for $40 - if price is your concern over quality.
Posted by coolnikin, 01-13-2011, 02:50 PM
highwinds seems to have more pop locations then maxcdn, http://www.maxcdn.com/features/network/ http://www.highwinds.com/portals/0/d...ap.100818a.pdf if i am paying 0.099/GB to maxcdn, wouldn't it be better to go with L3 at approx 0.13/GB ? anyone here using highwinds ? i would be only serving static content like css/js Last edited by coolnikin; 01-13-2011 at 02:54 PM.
Posted by DMEHosting, 01-13-2011, 03:13 PM
If you are happy with MaxCDN, why not just ask for a price match so you don't have to move and reconfigure some things?
Posted by IGobyTerry, 01-13-2011, 03:16 PM
What kind of traffic are you planning on using the CDN for?
Posted by coolnikin, 01-13-2011, 03:29 PM
not sure they would bother to price match, will email them and see how it goes couple of tb's a month , mostly static content served
Posted by IGobyTerry, 01-13-2011, 03:55 PM
Highwinds has a great network and their CDN service is good, but only for specific purposes. For static web content, like images and CSS files I would shy away; it's great for downloads, but the technology they use for cname redirects just isn't quite up to par with some of their competitors yet.
Posted by coolnikin, 01-14-2011, 12:42 AM
thanks terry, seems i am sticking to maxcdn for now
Posted by cloudtweaks, 01-22-2011, 07:17 AM
Mxcdn is good & they offer 25% off for WHT, be sure to check the offer section.
Posted by BirdBrained, 01-23-2011, 12:17 AM
I've used Highwinds for streaming live video for the past couple of years and they've been great. Only thing I don't like is that it's Flash only, and I'm needing to cater to the iOS crowd. I thought MaxCDN was going to be the answer to my prayers when I saw they used the Wowza Media Server, so I signed up. Then I saw the outrageous prices for a "live zone" ($99 setup fee) and minimum 1000 viewer hours per month at .15 per viewer hour fee! And, a $99 setup fee per zone for security tokens! Are they serious? Man, am I disappointed. Looks like I'll just be using them for css, images, javascipt and unsecured videos.
Posted by jNive, 01-23-2011, 09:09 PM
Voxel.net's VoxCAST CDN service (Live) runs Wowza also, and has a minimim commit of 1TB which should basically be $100/month and no setup fees I believe.
Posted by bsdvps, 01-24-2011, 12:02 AM
I heard from someone within the CDN industry that Highwinds has not expanded their network capacity in a few years and accepted capital to pay off debt rather than expand. I'm glad you didn't even mention Amazon's CDN service. All that zone nonsense was too much for me.
Posted by Constellate, 01-24-2011, 02:24 AM
just out of curiosity... is it cheaper to use a cdn to provide your own content or just look for a dc that's liberal with it's bandwidth? Is it the data management using automated software we all have access to or just the markup on the connectivity?
Posted by jNive, 01-24-2011, 02:59 PM
you would still be limited in concurrent viewers by your maximum upstream bandwidth, as well as having sub-optimal streaming speeds (stuttering/buffering) for user's further away - irrespective of their own maximum bandwidth. The CDN method increases your ability to serve concurrently, as well as maximising the streaming speeds that geographically diverse or distant users can get. So the costs involved would need to take that in to account (meaning a dedicated 1gbps uplink might cost you a heck of a lot more than even a 10TB commit or usage on a CDN)