1. At a computer system in a federation infrastructure comprising a ring of federated nodes, the computer system including one or more processors and system memory, a method for providing optimized access to a federation infrastructure resource, the method comprising: an act of receiving a user request to access a federation infrastructure resource that is hosted at a first node in the ring of federated nodes, the user request having been sent from a requesting user component; an act of detecting that the user request is not directed to an optimized location within the ring of federated nodes for accessing the federation infrastructure resource at the first node, the detecting being based on analyzing processing information for providing optimized access to federation infrastructure resources and one or more of: one or more characteristics of the requesting user component and one or more characteristics of the user request, the processing information including redirection information and priority information for optimizing requests for the federation infrastructure resource; an act of determining an appropriately optimized location within the ring of federated nodes for the requesting user component to access the federation infrastructure resource, including: when (i) the redirection information identifies a second node in the ring of federated nodes not hosting the federation infrastructure resource for lower-priority requests and (ii) the priority information identifies the request as a lower-priority request, determining that the appropriately optimized location is the second node not hosting the federation infrastructure resource, and when (i) the redirection information identifies the first node for higher-priority requests and (ii) the priority information identifies the request as a higher-priority request, determining that the appropriately optimized location is the first node at which the federation infrastructure resource is hosted; and an act of sending an indication of the appropriately optimized location within the ring of federated nodes for the requesting user component to access the federation infrastructure resource based on analyzing the processing information.