Comparing Files on the internet or CDN with MD5 to determine if they present same content

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So, a customer today was having some issues with their CDN. They said that their SSL CDN was presenting a different image, than the HTTP CDN. So, I thought the best way to begin any troubleshooting process would firstly be to try and recreate those issues. To do that, I need a way to compare the files programmatically, enter md5sum a handly little shell application usually installed by default on most Linux OS.

[user@cbast3 ~]$ curl https://3485asd3jjc839c9d3-08e84cacaacfcebda9281e3a9724b749.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/companies/5825cb13f2e6c9632807d103/header.jpeg -o file ; cat file | md5sum
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  382k  100  382k    0     0  1726k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 1732k
e917a67bbe34d4eb2d4fe5a87ce90de0  -

[user@cbast3 ~]$ curl http://3485asd3jjc839c9d3-08e84cacaacfcebda9281e3a9724b749.r45.cf3.rackcdn.com/companies/5825cb13f2e6c9632807d103/header.jpeg -o file2 ; cat file2 | md5sum
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  382k  100  382k    0     0  2071k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 2081k
e917a67bbe34d4eb2d4fe5a87ce90de0  -

As we can see from the output of both, the md5sum (the hashing) of the two files is the same, this means there is a statistically very very very high chance the content is exactly the same, especially when passing several hundred characters or more. The hashing algorithm is combination based, so the more characters, the less likely same combination is of coming around twice!

In this case I was able to disprove the customers claim’s. Not because I wanted to, but because I wanted to solve their issue. These results show me, the issue must be, if it is with the CDN, with a local edgenode local to the customer having the issue. Since I am unable to recreate it from my location, it is therefore not unreasonable to assume that it is a client side issue, or a failure on our CDN edgenode side, local to the customer. That’s how I troubleshooted this, and quite happy with this one! Took about 2 minutes to do, and a few minutes to come up with. A quick and useful check indeed, which reduces the number of possibilities considerably in tracing down the issue!

Cheers &
Best wishes,
Adam

Please note the real CDN location has been altered for privacy reasons