Life on the Edge: CDN and HTTPS Delivery in 2018

Presenter(s)

  • David Strauss

Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful in recording this session, however if you’d like to review an earlier version please visit https://events.drupal.org/vienna2017/sessions/life-edge-cdn-and-https-delivery-2017.

It's been possible for a while to deploy HTTPS with fast negotiation. Yet, many sites pay a heavy tax on performance by only deploying HTTPS from their origin (LAMP-style) infrastructure. In this presentation, we'll look at deployment strategies for HTTPS and CDNs -- as well as their impacts. We'll also consider how well Drupal 8 integrates with each of these models and rigorous ways to measure results.

We'll look at these deployment models:

  • Just a reverse proxy cache (like Varnish)
  • Traditional, asset-push CDNs
  • HTTPS just at the origin
  • Hybrid HTTPS from the origin for pages with CDN HTTPS for other assets
  • HTTPS deployed via CDN

And we'll consider their impacts on:

  • Security
  • Cost
  • Device compatibility
  • Ongoing maintenance requirements
  • Site visitor experience
  • Search-engine rankings

To bring everything fully into 2018 (including post-Vienna updates), we'll also look at:

  • IPv6 and the surprising impacts on mobile performance
  • The promise (and limits) of HTTP/2
  • How all of these technologies and services work (or don't work) with BigPipe
  • How deployment strategies relate to Net Neutrality and censorship
  • Updates to Google's algorithms for ranking based on HTTPS

Who Should Attend

  • Back-end Developers
  • Front-end Developers
  • Site Builders
  • Sys Admins

Prerequisites

  • Site owners who want to rank higher in Google results while providing their users with more security and performance.
  • Developers who are worried about how HTTPS will affect site performance.