It is very unlikely to be faster.  Our data center has very high bandwidth and we are running very capable web servers.  In addition, Apache is set up to serve multiple requests, including images, over a single TCP connection.  Once you consider that with an external server, you have to add the overhead of a DNS lookup, a TCP handshake, and then getting the file, I would be very surprised if any image could be served faster externally.

 

In any case, serving external images from your own site is also known as "hotlinking" and is considered to be poor form at best.  The reason is that you are chewing up someone else's bandwidth and cycles by using their site in a way they did not intend for it to be used.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking.

 

>>>> "Rajko M." <rmatov101@charter.net> 9/9/2010 8:17 PM >>>
>On Thursday 09 September 2010 19:52:10 Marcus Rueckert wrote:
>> maybe that external server is even faster than the opensuse wiki?
>> your argument is falling pretty short.

>Maybe or maybe not.
>How it resolves in practice depends not only on file serving speeds, but also
>on where are servers located and how your Internet provider DNS works (mine is
>not a bright star).

>In general you don't want links to images on another sites as you have no
>control over it, and no signal when is changed.