Alex Rivera | Logout

Microsoft CDN for jQuery or Google CDN?

Asked 2009-09-18T23:08:56.910
187

Does it actually matter which CDN you use to link to your jquery file or any javascript file for that matter. Is one potentially faster than the other? What other factors could play a role in which cdn you decide to use? I know that Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google all have CDN's now.

Edit
Report

2 Answers

89

You should absolutely use the Google CDN for jQuery (and this is coming from a Microsoft-centric developer).

It's simple statistics. Those who would consider using the MS CDN for jQuery will always be a minority. There are too many non-MS developers using jQuery who will use Google's and wouldn't consider using Microsoft's. Since one of the big wins with a public CDN is improved caching, splitting usage among multiple CDNs decreases the potential for that benefit.

answered 2009-11-20T05:53:13.947
4

As stated by Pingdom:

When someone visits your site, if they have already visited another site that uses the same jQuery file on the same CDN, the file will have been cached and doesn’t need to be downloaded at all. It can’t get any faster than that.

This means that the most widely used CDN will have the odds on its side, which can pay off for your site.

A few observations on performance: Google’s CDN is consistently the slowest of the three both in North America and Europe. In Europe, Microsoft’s CDN is the fastest.

answered 2013-07-16T07:34:47.363

Your Answer