i think the 1% may not very accurate? my blog is also rated as being in the top 1% and it doesn't use cloudfront or s3 or anything cool like that. it's just static pages at webfaction (who are nice guys, but still, it's a shared host).

not trying to diss the post, which was very interesting, just suspect of the pingdom stats. unless using static pages alone is sufficient to get you into the fastest 1% these days? i guess it's possible. maybe they're hosted nearby... [update: the traceroutes differ in where they enter the usa]