CDN is abbreviated for the term Content Delivery Network. CDN has emerged as a crucial segment of any latest website and application in today’s digitized world. Content like videos or images that you watch on your smartphones via website or app is, in all probability, delivered through a content delivery network.
Today, CDN has become a vital part of the CDN offering. And considering the lack of resources that could turn out to be a guide for beginners about CDNs, this article becomes essential for everyone who wants valuable insight on CDN. You’ll get to know what it is, how it works, what benefits it offers, and related aspects simply and understandably.
So, let’s start.
How Does CDN Work?
Fundamentally, a CDN is an interlinked network of well-established servers that aims to deliver content securely, reliably, quickly, and at a below cost. A CDN ensures the secure placement of the servers to enhance speed and connectivity. These servers are typically placed at the exchange points between the different networks.
These IXPs or Internet Exchange Points are the fundamental positions where all the internet service providers link and tether. This is done to ensure interlinked access to the traffic getting generated on their networks.
A CDN ensures high-speed data delivery at low costs and minimal transit time with such a strong connection to these exceptionally interconnected and high-speed locations/positions. Apart from the server placement in IXPs, a CDN takes care of the typical client/server data transfers with several optimizations.
CDNs choose strategic locations across the world when it comes to the placement of Data Centers. They are specifically designed to improve website security and to survive internet congestion and other failures.
Benefits of CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Although the advantages of the content delivery network depend on the requirements and size of the Internet assets, the basic advantages can be classified into four different aspects:
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Boosting Website Load Times
Now, any website visitor can enjoy faster page loading time with the help of CDN. This happens due to the closer distribution of the content to the website visitors via an accessible CDN server.
As visitors tend to stay away from slow-loading websites, a CDN can come as an aid. It will significantly reduce bounce rates and extend the amount of time spent by the visitors. In simple terms, the faster the website, the more visitors would stick around for a long halt. There are a couple of easy ways to achieve a faster page load, like using caching and AMP plugins for WordPress, and using a CDN is also considered one of the best practices for a fast-loading webpage.
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Lowering the Bandwidth Costs
One of the significant expenses for websites is bandwidth consumption costs when it comes to website hosting. CDNs utilize caching and optimizations to lower the amount of data provided by the origin server, consequently lowering the hosting costs for the website operators/owners.
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Boosting Content Availability and Redundancy
Any website can face interruptions in its everyday functions due to colossal traffic or hardware failures. However, using CDN advantages the website owners with their distribution network to withstand any hardware failure and handle increased traffic better than any other origin server.
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Enhancing Website Security
CDN plays a crucial role in enhancing website security by ensuring enhancements to security certificates, DDoS mitigation, and other optimization solutions.
How does a CDN improve page load time?
As discussed before, CDN is a worldwide distribution network of servers responsible for storing/caching and delivering a few or all website content. Every server present in this distribution network is known as an edge server or Point of Presence (PoP).
You deliver the website resources via a CDN’s edges or PoPs rather than delivering them directly via your website server. Let’s say you’re using a CDN along with the server of North Virginia. Consider that the CDN you’re using has PoPs distributed across the US, including the west coast.
Now, if any user visits your website, they will get the resources from the CDN server closer to the west coast instead of the website server on the east coast. This less geographic distance between the user and the CDN server reduces the load time of the resources and improves page load time.
What Kind Of Content Can A CDN Deliver?
Apparently, a CDN can be used to cache and deliver content for your website. Ever since its introduction, CDN has played a vital role in offering different types of internet content.
CDN serves a significant portion of today’s Internet content, including content for social media sites, on-demand streaming media, live streaming media, applications like portals and eCommerce, downloadable objects like software, media files, documents, and websites objects like scripts, graphics, and text.