Ask HN: How to target Europe w/ large file download server?

1 points by ScottWhigham 12y ago ↗ HN

Decent size ecommerce site that sells large file downloads (>500MB). We've been using a .com hosted in the US for almost a decade. We have lots of Euro, Aussie, and Indian users that complain of speed. Our idea:

Server 1: hosted in USA - http://www...com Server 2: hosted in UK - http://www...co.uk

The problem here is that we don't want to "target by country". We want the .co.uk domain, for example, to be a signal to Google that "users of that region should use this server instead of the .com". Obviously geotargeting in GWT wants you to specify one country - this isn't realistic though since someone in Germany, for example, would far rather download from a server 1,000 miles away (the .in server) than one 9,000 miles away (the .com).

Suggestions?

2 comments

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t0 12y ago ↗

http://aws.amazon.com/route53/ is what you want. DNS queries return a different IP for the same domain depending on where the user is.

ScottWhigham 12y ago ↗

Thanks for the help. I looked into Route 53, UltraDNS, and a few more. The problems, for me, seem to be (a) high cost, and (b) possibly running afoul of Google/Bing. I tried getting a quote from UltraDNS, for example, and that required a phone call... I also looked at other lower cost providers (DNS Made Easy) but then that whole "What if Google penalizes you?" question made me queasy!