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and it's almost always cheapest (even after labor support) to DIY with bare metal at very large scale

If you simply need to deliver files or live streams, without needing to provide complex functionality at the edge (various kinds of protection, geo blocking, or pay-per-minute), and your traffic patterns are predictable - it's often cheaper to build your own solution. Once you start thinking about backbone and colo redundancy, deploy in different countries with contract commits - things get expensive very quickly.

The beauty of using a massive third party delivery service isn't performance, it's elasticity. Just like with the web apps (frequently hosted on DIY systems) that go down as soon as the link goes up on HN - being able to absorb traffic spikes without failing (and without forcing you to commit to a higher tier for a year) can be very valuable.




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