Static assets served from CDN with geographic edge caching

An origin server in us-east-1 adds 150–300ms of network latency for users in APAC or Europe before a single byte of content arrives (ISO-25010 time-behaviour). A CDN with geographic edge caching eliminates that latency by serving cached responses from the PoP nearest the user. Separately, static assets served without Cache-Control: immutable, max-age=31536000 are re-validated on every visit, incurring a conditional request round-trip even when the asset has not changed. Both issues compound on high-traffic pages.

Configure aggressive cache headers for versioned static assets in next.config.ts:

// next.config.ts
const config = {
  async headers() {
    return [
      {
        source: '/_next/static/:path*',
        headers: [
          {
            key: 'Cache-Control',
            value: 'public, max-age=31536000, immutable'
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}
export default config

Verify CDN is active by checking response headers for a CDN-specific header:

curl -sI https://yoursite.com | grep -i 'x-vercel-cache\|cf-cache-status\|x-cache'
# HIT = served from CDN edge; MISS = reached origin

For self-hosted deployments without a built-in CDN, place Cloudflare (free tier sufficient) or AWS CloudFront in front of your origin. Ensure the CDN's cache rules allow caching of static assets.

• ID: cdn-caching

• Severity: info

• What to look for: Count all relevant instances and enumerate each. Check the project's hosting configuration. Look for CDN usage (Vercel Edge Network, Cloudflare, AWS CloudFront, etc.). Verify assets are cached with cache-control headers. Check DNS or deployment config for CDN integration.

• Pass criteria: Static assets (JS, CSS, images) are served from a CDN with geographic edge caching. At least 1 implementation must be verified. Cache-Control headers are set: immutable with max-age=31536000 for versioned assets, or no-cache for dynamic content.

• Fail criteria: Assets served from origin server only (no CDN), or CDN is not configured. Every request travels to origin regardless of geographic location. Cache headers missing or set to short TTL.

• Skip (N/A) when: The project is deployed to a single region with no geographic distribution needs.

• Detail on fail: Describe the CDN gap. Example: "All requests go to origin in us-east-1; users in APAC experience 300ms+ latency. No CDN in front" or "CDN configured but cache headers not set; assets not cached at edges".

• Remediation: Modern platforms include CDN by default:

  Vercel: Uses Vercel Edge Network globally by default. Netlify: Uses Netlify Edge globally by default. Cloudflare: Global CDN with 200+ edge locations.

  Set cache headers:

  // next.config.ts
  const config = {
    headers: async () => {
      return [
        {
          source: '/static/:path*',
          headers: [
            {
              key: 'cache-control',
              value: 'public, max-age=31536000, immutable'
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  }