This is diving deep into the mechanics.
In the feed there is the ENCLOSURE tag:
<enclosure url="https://www.mokana.com/podlove/file/5/s/feed/c/mp3/test_audio.mp3" length="289705" type="audio/mpeg"/>
This is the URL that a podcast player will use to pull the audio.
I am using Amazon CloudFront to distribute the audio files via 101 distribution points around the world. This provides the obvious performance advantages.
But here is my concern: No matter which location is the closest to the listener, the VERY FIRST GET request is always going to be the main server upon which I am hosting my site. Right now, testing shows a 1.9 second latency just for this initial pull and I am pretty close to the hosting data center. Once I get out of the USA, say in Europe or the Middle East, that initial data pull must come all the way back to the main datacenter before the redirection.
The above URL: “https://www.mokana.com/podlove/file/5/s/feed/c/mp3/test_audio.mp3” is accessed first then a new URL is built and the listener is redirected to the CDN URL for the actual audio pull.
All of this takes time. Part of me says, OK, but that is a minimal sacrifice and then the actual data pull is offloaded to Amazon and that is that, no more resource allocation. Other part of me is that any delay in response prompts a listener to bail.
The above approach allows for listening statistics.
Any thoughts on this topic?
Mahalo
MOKANA