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by donutshop 1215 days ago
I guess I'm just wondering how I could piecemeal it together without using cloudflare. A friend had suggested checking out bunny DNS and that got me going down the rabbit hole.
2 comments

That’s not really what a CDN is/does…

The value proposition of a CDN is being physically closer to customers around the world, which means renting space in (often) expensive carrier hotels.

Yes yes all the major CDNs have loads of developer and infrastructure wizbangs to keep you on their platform but that’s not the fundamental value.

It's like trying to build an "Open Source Gas Station chain".

Yes, you can hack up a storage container and a pump with "open source" bits, but that's not what makes it useful.

What makes it useful is the fact that there is a $chain Gas Station in every nook and cranny. And that's not something openness can change.

To butcher your an analogy, an open source gas station chain would be a publicly an available light rail; one that replaces driving for many citizens along the route.

Openness helps kill off rent seekers. This might be the deeper concept that sits behind the original authors question.