Hi, Discourse awesome! 
I’m hosting my forum on AWS Lightsail in Seoul, Korea (ap-northeast-2a) and 99% of the users are from Korea.
Will there still be a benefit if I add CDN like fastly or CloudFlare on my forum?
AI-generated summary
Should I add CDN despite my server being close to my users?
The discussion revolves around whether a CDN (Content Delivery Network) is necessary for a forum hosted on AWS Lightsail in Seoul, Korea, with 99% of users from Korea. kevin.lee asks if there are benefits to adding a CDN like Fastly or CloudFlare. sam suggests testing to find out, but notes that a CDN can reduce load on the application server and potentially serve files closer to end-users.
kevin.lee expresses doubts about the need for a CDN, given South Korea’s small size and robust internet backbone. neounix agrees, advising against adding unnecessary features or plugins.
codinghorror highlights the major advantage of a CDN in this scenario: reducing load on the server by serving static files directly to users, bypassing the server pipeline.
Only way to find out is test 
Not expecting any major advantages, but a CDN will reduce some of the load on your application server. Also you may have multiple POPs in South Korea so you would possibly serve the files closer to the end users if you pick the right CDN.
South Korea is not a big country, I doubt there are multiply POPs.
If there are no major advantages, I should just stick as it is.
If I happen to add CDN to my forum, I’ll post the test result.
Thank you.
Hi Kevin,
In my view, it is better to keep things simple.
Do not add features, plugins, CDNs, etc unless you really need them. Don’t add tech on top of tech just because “you can”.
South Korea has one of the most robust Internet backbones in the world in a very small geographic footprint. More than likely, you don’t really need a CDN in South Korean for a forum-based web application hosted in South Korean with 99% of the users from Korea.
The major advantage, if all your users are in the same local geographic area, is it reduces load on the server. The static files are served directly from the CDN to the users, and they don’t pass through the rails / ruby pipeline.