Life on the Edge: CDN and HTTPS Delivery in 2017

It's been possible for a while to deploy HTTPS with fast negotiation. Yet, many sites pay a heavy tax on performance by only deploying HTTPS from their origin (LAMP-style) infrastructure. In this presentation, we'll look at deployment strategies for HTTPS and CDNs -- as well as their impacts. We'll also consider how well Drupal 8 integrates with each of these models and rigorous ways to measure results.

We'll look at these deployment models:

• Just a reverse proxy cache (like Varnish)
• Traditional, asset-push CDNs
• HTTPS just at the origin
• Hybrid HTTPS from the origin for pages with CDN HTTPS for other assets
• HTTPS deployed via CDN

And we'll consider their impacts on:

• Security
• Cost
• Device compatibility
• Ongoing maintenance requirements
• Site visitor experience
• Search-engine rankings

To bring everything fully into 2017, we'll also look at:

• IPv6 and the surprising impacts on mobile performance
• The promise (and limits) of HTTP/2
• How all of these technologies and services work (or don't work) with BigPipe