Today, Microsoft announced that Virtual Earth is now available as a part of the Microsoft Edge Caching Network, ie. Microsoft's Content Delivery Network (CDN). CDNs are a kind of geographically distributed cache system. A CDN works by duplicating web data at multiple data centers around the world. With more data centers, a user will be closer to a server and network latency times will be reduced. Microsoft claim delivery speeds are increased by up to 82%.

A couple of weeks ago we published an article that described the use of Amazon S3 and CloudFront (Amazon's CDN) to deliver map tiles for the EcoMapCostaRica.com maps. This is the same concept, although Microsoft also have servers in South America (Sao Paulo) and Australia (Sydney), which Amazon do not have.

Here is the press release:

Get Virtual Earth Content Faster through the New Content Delivery Network

Today, Microsoft® is pleased to introduce a new performance improvement for the Virtual Earth platform – the Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Microsoft CDN is a key pillar of the Microsoft cloud computing strategy and is one of the primary investments the Virtual Earth team is making to increase overall platform performance.

CDN is composed of multiple geo-distributed data centers (throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia) that allow Virtual Earth to host content closer to customers and end users.

As a result of CDN, delivery speeds of Virtual Earth content have been improved up to 82 percent for both the Virtual Earth AJAX Map Control and Virtual Earth Silverlight Map Control. This first release is part of an on-going program that will expand the network later this year.

To begin utilizing CDN, you will need to make an opt-in, non-breaking change to your AJAX map control code; no action is required for Silverlight Map Control users, as CDN logic is already built-in. Given the significant performance benefits of CDN, it will be the preferred method of accessing Virtual Earth content.

For details on implementing CDN for the Virtual Earth AJAX Map Control, please visit the associated documentation on MSDN.

Comments (1)

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Updated the Costa Rica maps
written by Richard Marsden, May 20, 2009

I've already updated the http://www.ecomapcostarica.com/map/map.shtml maps. The change is very simple: you simply need to change the Virtual Earth script reference. See the MSDN documentation reference in the above press release for details.

It doesn't seem that much faster for me, but I am based in the US. Also the default satellite and aerial tile layers were already being distributed through Amazon's CloudFront CDN.

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