CDN Software Guide
In the last couple of years, technology has changed the digital landscape of content. With increased internet penetration, businesses are looking for a better way to deliver their content to their target audience.
Also, it needs to be noted that the internet speed has also increased many folds in the last couple of years making it possible to create complex websites that are media-rich.
With such improvements, the expectations of the customers have also increased and they are looking for ways to consume content with minimum latency; this has given rise to the popularity of Content Delivery Networks or CDNs.
What Is CDN?
Any popular website that has huge traffic probably uses a CDN and this reference is important to understand what exactly a CDN is.
It is now clear from the usage of CDN that it is used to ensure that the high traffic does not hamper the working of the website. CDN basically is a network of servers that are located in data centers all across the world.
CDN is mainly used to deliver the content of the internet at a quicker pace. CDN is mostly used for loading internet content which is not limited but includes images, videos, javascript files, stylesheets, and HTML pages.
The majority of the web traffic of popular websites like Amazon, Netflix, and Facebook is served through CDNs.
In short, it can be assumed that all the content that you consume on the internet from new sites to YouTube videos is served by CDNs and you are interacting with CDNs on a daily basis.
How Does CDN Work?
CDN comprises a network of servers that are linked together with the common aim of delivering content to the audience in a secure, reliable, and cheap manner at a quicker pace.
CDN mainly focuses on reducing the distance between the server of the website and the visitor. CDN makes it possible by storing a cached version of the content in multiple geographical locations which can also be referred to as points of presence or PoPs.
All the PoP further consists of caching servers whose job is to deliver the content to the visitors that lies within its proximity. In short, CDN ensures good coverage for the user by placing the content in multiple locations simultaneously.
Advantages Of Using CDN
From the very purpose of CDNs, the advantages of CDNs can be listed. Listed below are a few of the advantages of using CDNs.
01. It improves the load time of a website page
When CDN is enabled, the loading time of the web pages reduces drastically as this gives a pleasant experience to the visitors.
Also, the reduced loading time further reduces the bounce rate of a website which can negatively impact its rating on any search engine. CDN ensures that the bounce rate is low by loading the pages faster so that the visitors do not have to wait long to lay their hands on the content.
02. Hosting cost is reduced by reducing bandwidth cost
A heavy bandwidth is consumed whenever an origin server is required to respond to requests and this results in an additional cost for any business.
CDNs lower this cost with the help of optimization and caching and ensure that the amount of data that an origin server requires to process is less. This further reduces the hosting cost too.
03. Smooth experience for simultaneous users
A CDN is powerful enough to handle massive traffic smoothly. With CDN, one can ensure that many users are able to access the same network at the same time simultaneously without any delay.
04. Constant availability of content
Servers that work for CDN are always running and this means that even if your server is down, CDN will ensure that your website is accessible.
The distributed nature of a CDN ensures that even if one of the CDN servers goes down, another picks up to ensure that the website is always running.
05. It protects the website
CDNs are designed in a manner that they can defend the website from both DoS and DDoS attacks. In such attacks, basically, the website is flooded with junk network traffic with the aim to crash the website with huge loads but thanks to numerous servers of CDNs, all the traffic is absorbed smoothly.
This ensures that the website is running even when it is under attack.
