What is CDN?
CDN or Content Delivery Network refers to a highly distributed server platform at multiple locations that help to reduce web load delays. CDN does this by reducing the distance between the server and the client.
Without a CDN platform, the origin server hosting the Website must respond to every single request from the end-user. As a result, significant traffic and high speeds can occur on the originating server, which increases the chances of failure when the extremely high traffic load or regularly high traffic volume is no longer managed.
By using CDNs, on the other hand, the server will respond to end-user requests instead of the origin server. The best thing is that the CDN servers are closer to the end-user and faster and quicker to transmit.
The CDN downloads the content from the origin server and delivers it to the end-user via its own server. This results in a better, faster web experience.
How does a CDN Work?
Did you know that CDNs serve half of the internet traffic? Well, that’s right. Without CDNs, we’ll be living in a world where people compete who first load a website.
The primary objective of network content delivery systems is to reduce latency. Latency means the delay or amount of time that the end-user submits a request for a web-page and the full loading of the web-page. CDNs reduce latency by reducing the actual physical distance to be travelled.
To achieve this feat, CDNs store a cached version of the website contents in various data centres across the world. These are known as “PoPs” or “PoPs.” They have their own caching service, which will distribute the web content to end-users in the vicinity of that particular location.
What happens when a web visitor access a website, they make requests for data needed to make a website. These include HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images.
In the past, they are all part of the origin server hosting the Website. That’s why sometimes loading websites is fast and sometimes sluggish. It depends on the proximity of the visitor to the server, the speed of the Internet, and the amount of traffic on the origin server at that time.
However, with CDN, the content request will be submitted to the nearest PoP and will respond to the visitor with a cached version of the content requested to load the web page.
Why use a CDN for your Website?
As more and more businesses go online, and the world is more interlinked than ever before, more and more challenges are blocking the delivery of content. The problem is to serve global audiences, the challenge of helping both desktop and mobile devices, and the challenge of cybersecurity threats like DDoS attacks.
As a website owner, you want to solve these challenges and give your customers the best possible web experience, regardless of whether they are shopping online or browsing your content.
A CDN is the answer to all these challenges. CDNs have become the backbone of the Internet without you know it. They expand the reach of websites without too much traffic on burdensome origin servers. Furthermore, they have specific safety functions that shield your IP transmission from unwanted intrusions and DDoS attacks.
Now that you know about CDNs and how your own Website can benefit, it is time to extend the range and provide your web visitors with the best possible experience.
You can go to Cloudflare for more information.
Cloud Content Delivery Network – Web Administrators Solution to Web and Video on Demand
You may not know the term CDN or content delivery network, but the technology is widely used in the modern Internet.
Unless you are a regular web user, you can understand CDN better because of its significance in providing you with web content more quickly in a global situation.
If you have a website and want to give your visitors the best web experience, even if they’re halfway across the globe, then CDN is the way to go.
But see above a brief introduction to the definition of CDN or the Content Delivery Network.
