Running logic close to the user. Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge, Fastly — latency over vendor.
Category · DevOps & Infra
Logic close to the user.
Edge computing runs code not in a central data centre but across a network of locations close to the user — via Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge or Fastly. The request doesn't have to travel halfway around the globe first.
That noticeably lowers latency, because the distance between user and logic is short. CDNs have long cached static content; edge brings the computation to the edge too.
Where it earns its keep.
Edge suits lightweight, near-stateless tasks with high latency sensitivity: checking authentication, redirecting requests, A/B tests, personalisation, geographic routing.
We use it when perceived speed makes or breaks the product — and so avoid the detour to a central region for every small step.
The constraint.
The edge runtime is pared down: limited execution time, no full Node, no direct access to a central database without latency. Heavy logic doesn't belong at the edge.
And data residency gets more complex when code runs in many places worldwide. With personal data, that's a point we clarify upfront, not after the fact.
