End-to-end monitoring and optimization of a content delivery network using anycast routing

A method for monitoring Anycast performance in a content delivery network (CDN) comprising a plurality of points of presence (PoPs), said method comprising:

• at an end user machine, receiving content that is embedded with monitoring code comprising sets of instructions for performing said Anycast performance monitoring;
• identifying a location of the end user machine based on a set of instructions of the monitoring code;
• determining a set of the plurality of PoPs that are geographically closest to the identified location of the end user machine based on a set of instructions of the monitoring code for computing a distance between the location of said end user machine and a location of each PoP of the plurality of PoPs;
• measuring performance to download a particular object from each PoP of the set of PoPs based on a request that is directly addressed to each PoP of the set of PoPs according to a set of instructions of the monitoring code;
• measuring performance to download the particular object from an Anycast PoP of the plurality of PoPs that is identified based on a request that is submitted to an Anycast address of the CDN according to a set of instructions of the monitoring code;
• and
• reporting said performance measurements to a monitoring server for determining whether performance of the Anycast PoP is optimal relative to performance of each PoP of the set of PoPs.

A monitoring system for monitoring Anycast performance in a content delivery network (CDN) comprising a plurality of points of presence (PoPs), said monitoring system comprising:

• a caching server with a processor configured to perform operations comprising serving to an end user machine, content that is embedded with monitoring code comprising sets of instructions executable by the end user machine for (i) determining a location of the end user machine, (ii) determining a set of the plurality of PoPs that are geographically proximate to the location of the end user machine, (iii) measuring performance for downloading a particular object from each PoP of the set of PoPs and a PoP that is selected from the plurality of PoPs based on Anycast routing, and (iv) reporting said performance measurements to a second monitoring server;
• and
• a monitoring server with a processor configured to perform operations comprising (i) receiving said performance measurements that are reported by the end user machine, (ii) generating a performance report that identifies if performance of a PoP selected based on Anycast routing is optimal relative to performance of each PoP of a set of PoPs that is geographically proximate to the end user machine based on the received performance measurements, and (iii) modifying an Anycast configuration to cause the end user machine to be routed to a particular PoP from the set of geographically proximate PoPs when performance of the particular PoP is optimal relative to performance of the PoP selected by Anycast routing as identified by the performance report.