Whether you’re aware of it or not, you interact with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) every day; when you shop online, read online articles, watch videos on YouTube or use social media. Basically, a content delivery network is a network or a system of servers which delivers different web content to you based on your geographic locations, the origin of content delivery server and the webpage. We’ve asked guys from JodiHost to tell us more about CDN and here’s what we have found out!
A Content Delivery Network is effective when it comes to the delivery of content of sites that have high traffic and global reach. The speed of the delivery of the content to the user depends on the geographical distance between the user and the server; the closer you are to the server, the faster delivery you get. Additionally, a content delivery network provides protection against a large traffic flow.
A server that is the nearest to the site visitor responds to the request. The content delivery network copies the pages of the site to the system of servers which are at different geographical locations and the contents of the page are cached. When a visitor wants to see a page that is part of the CDN, the network redirects this request from the website’s server to the closest CDN server and it delivers the cached content. Additionally, the CDN communicates with the originating website’s server in order to deliver any content, including the one that hasn’t been cached previously.
Obviously, we interact with a CDN, but the process of bouncing through this system of servers is almost transparent to us. If the URL that is delivered is not the same as the one you have requested, you can be sure that a CDN has been accessed. Otherwise, everything will seem completely normal to you. CDNs are also used in serving content to clients/consumers and B2B interactions.
Nowadays, we do most of things online, so various organizations use CDNs to accelerate the content (mobile, dynamic or static), e-commerce transactions, as well as games and videos.
