A Content Delivery Network (CDN or Content Distribution Network) is a system of tactically situated servers throughout the globe. The major objectives of CDN are about speed, scalability, and high-availability.
In fact, it is more than likely that you are already enjoying the services and advantages of some CDN, without knowing it, unless you do not use any service of Google, Twitter, Facebook or even WordPress of course.
Moreover, you should know what CDN is. It is presently one of the most important technologies of the Internet and the web as we recognize it today and enjoys its work in part to the content delivery network.
What is a Content Delivery Network (CDN)?
Bloggers and site owners generally make use of shared hosting, and all of our data are hosted at a data center. For example, my site is hosted with Go Daddy hosting, and I’m using an Asian data center.
When any user opens digitalstarz.com, their appeal goes to my data center in Asia, and the data from my website load onto the user’s browser.
If the user is far away from Asian data center, there will be several pings and invisibility, and thus, it may take more time than expected to load the site.
Now, a CDN has data centers in different geographical locations, and when your website is using a content delivery network and a user opens your website, your data like files, images, etc., are functioned from the nearest data center of the content delivery network (CDN) you are using.
Why is it Useful?
CDNs have turn out to be one of the simplest ways to make your website load faster. Actually, all speed checking tools like Google Page Speed and GT Metrix advice using a good content delivery network (CDN) to increase a website’s performance.
People with specialized backgrounds are concerned about what CDNs are and the uses of using a content delivery network (CDN). However, for non-technical people, this idea seems unfamiliar.
Performance: Content is cached around the world. Smaller distance to the users will not only reduce potential but also minimalize packet loss.
Scalability: Off-loading website traffic to a content delivery network (CDN) will make it simpler to direct traffic points and scale up or down within no time.
Reliability: Requests are permanently directed to the nearest accessible location. If one server is not accessible, those requests are automated and sent to the available server.
Lower Costs: A content delivery network requires less self-managed infrastructure and makes it easier to reduce costs.
SEO Improvement: Page speed is a key factor when it comes to page ranking. Most search engines consider the page loading time in their formulas.
How Does Push VS Pull Work?
Every user has the option to choose either a Push Zone or Pull Zone.
A Push Zone allows uploading content directly to the CDN like a regular hosting account. The content is then synced out to all POPs. Push zones are ideal for large files.
A Pull Zone caches static content from the user’s origin server and distributes it from a POP.
CDN Features
SPDY: It is an open networking protocol for transferring web content. It operates HTTP traffic, with specific objectives of decreasing web page load latency and increasing web security.
Secure Token: Token authentication ensures that an URL is not only accessible during a defined time. The validity can be set individually for each file.
Hotlink Protection: Hotlink protection will ensure that files are only loaded from predefined websites.
Raw Logs: Raw logs provide more details about each request.
Who Uses Content Delivery Network (CDN)?
Most of the main sites use present CDNs. Microsoft and Google have its own data centers, where they run their own content delivery networks. Other websites like Facebook or WordPress.com, as well as any high-traffic websites that use content delivery network services.
Nowadays we hear a lot about Cloud Services and they are nearly based on CDN, the servers hosted across the globe that function content from the cloud services, which is nearer to you.
There are several types of content delivery networks (CDN), as in the whole thing, as we have high-level content delivery network companies like CloudFlare or Amazon Cloud.
Using a content delivery network (CDN) is partial to high traffic sites, actually, any website can profit from using a CDN, that include your website.
Do I Really Need a CDN?
The content delivery network presents huge benefits for your website, let on your own for your online business. Particularly if your website presents a great deal and static content such as images, files or graphics, you should start using a content delivery network.
This will make things easier to load on your web hosting server and will help your static content in an ultra-fast way to your users, which will result in a top user experience and by the way, it’s less in cost.
As your website grows, traffic will increase and you will need to move it to higher-level servers and price or even to dedicated servers, as requests to your web server increase. A content delivery network (CDN) will let you reschedule this type of costly updates.
Benefits of Using Content Delivery Network
These are the benefits of using a content delivery network (CDN):
- Page speed increases (Ranking will improve).
- Users/clients/consumers will be at an advantage and happiness.
- Can manage more traffic.
- Will be saving money on limited bandwidth hosting.
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Google Ranking
Google has made it clear that page load time is one of the search engine ranking factors. By using a content delivery network, one can speed up the website to a great extent.
Besides, CDN will help you decrease the bounce rate (this is good for SEO). For any website, the faster it loads, the better the website is.
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More Conversions and Sales
If the website loads faster, your users and customers will be happier. If you have happy clients, there will be more sales. People would be frustrated to do business with the website that is slow in loading.
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Manage More Traffic
Every time if your blog posts go viral, your web server gets an enormous amount of traffic. At the moment, your site may crash and gives an error like: “Internal server error” or “Database error”.
With a reliable content delivery network service, one can simply minimize such down times and the website can manage a lot more traffic.
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Reduce Hosting Cost
If you are using dedicated or VPS hosting, or any limited bandwidth hosting, using a CDN will reduce your costs by a great margin.
Content delivery networks (CDNs) are cheaper than normal web hosting, and since an important data will be distributed from CDN servers, no need of worrying about the bandwidth rate of your web hosting.
Final Thoughts
Your website maybe big or small It doesn’t matter, using a content delivery network (CDN) service will definitely help you increase your website’s load time and server response. The only hard part for the beginners is setting it up.
If you think this article is important and helpful for a blogger to help their website with a content delivery network. Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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