Ease of testing, ease of configuration

When evaluating CDN solutions, Foursquare was impressed with Fastly’s quick and easy configuration process, which allowed them to set up services and immediately begin testing performance against their previous set up. Because Fastly is built on Varnish, an open source software that allows users to fine-tune caching, Foursquare’s team was able to instantly deploy custom Varnish-based configurations to the edge.

API acceleration

Foursquare hosts their infrastructure at Equinix’s Virginia facility and was previously terminating SSL centrally, which introduced significant latency to their API’s performance. Foursquare saw immediate performance gains after switching to Fastly and moving SSL termination to the edge, closest to the users themselves.

With Fastly performing the SSL handshake at the edge servers closest to app users, Foursquare cut setup latency by approximately 150 milliseconds, a significant improvement in performance.

By developers, for developers

Fastly gives customers the flexibility to completely control their service configuration. Foursquare was able to quickly and easily customize their CDN setup via Fastly’s control panel and utilize the Fastly API to upload custom VCL configurations.

Using Fastly, Foursquare can control what content is cached as well as what data is streamed using Fastly streaming logs, providing them with the necessary information to troubleshoot any issues.

Freedom to change infrastructure

Foursquare is now transitioning into their own data center, a move made possible by Fastly’s support.