Relay Edge

An experiment in moving lightweight request decisions closer to users at the edge.

ExperimentCloudflare WorkersTypeScriptOpenTelemetry

−37msmedian routing

3policies tested

2026year explored

The question

Which parts of request routing benefit from the edge, and which become harder to observe there?

I compared regional and edge execution using the same policy model, trace vocabulary, and failure cases.

The experiment identified a narrow class of routing decisions worth moving while keeping stateful logic centralized.

Lower latency is useful only when the new operational distance remains understandable.