So I just wanted to try some completely unscientific tests to see which cdn I could reach fastest. I use a teeny bit of jquery on my site. As it turns out, even Microsoft's ASP.net cdn is lower latency than Google's.
So, ignoring network flukes — jQuery, Microsoft, and CloudFlare are roughly 14ms away. Nice. And my server is stable at 40ms (still nothing to complain about!). But look at Google! There's even a huge variance on the average pings. Crazy. They must not be devoting tons of resources to their javascript cdn project.
I've decided to use jQuery's own cdn due to their average max ping being the lowest of the really fast cdn's.
Of course, this whole thing is totally unscientific and completely irrelevant for all intents and purposes,
but I figured I'd publish my small bit of research just in case anyone thought it was useful.
Numbers follow:
ping -n 100 ajax.googleapis.com ... Ping statistics for 74.125.127.95: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 98, Lost = 2 (2% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 29ms, Maximum = 47ms, Average = 33ms and again Ping statistics for 173.194.74.95: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 83ms, Maximum = 103ms, Average = 88ms and again Ping statistics for 173.194.64.95: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 61ms, Maximum = 90ms, Average = 65ms
ping -n 100 code.jquery.com ... Ping statistics for 72.21.91.19: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 99, Lost = 1 (1% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 36ms, Average = 14ms and again Ping statistics for 72.21.91.19: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 99, Lost = 1 (1% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 30ms, Average = 14ms and again Ping statistics for 72.21.91.19: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 31ms, Average = 13ms
ping -n 100 ajax.aspnetcdn.com ... Ping statistics for 65.54.87.171: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 11ms, Maximum = 27ms, Average = 14ms and again Ping statistics for 65.55.87.47: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 55ms, Maximum = 90ms, Average = 59ms and again Ping statistics for 65.54.87.30: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 11ms, Maximum = 32ms, Average = 15ms
ping -n 100 cdnjs.cloudflare.com ... Ping statistics for 141.101.125.37: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 99, Lost = 1 (1% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 27ms, Average = 13ms and again Ping statistics for 141.101.126.37: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 38ms, Average = 15ms and again Ping statistics for 141.101.126.37: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 39ms, Average = 14ms
And for comparison, my server:
ping -n 100 mirror.explodie.org ... Ping statistics for 70.91.191.69: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 99, Lost = 1 (1% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 34ms, Maximum = 86ms, Average = 41ms and again Ping statistics for 70.91.191.69: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 33ms, Maximum = 93ms, Average = 41ms and again Ping statistics for 70.91.191.69: Packets: Sent = 100, Received = 100, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 34ms, Maximum = 90ms, Average = 40ms