How do Content Distribution Networks Work?
A Content Delivery Network (also known as a CDN) consists of hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of interconnected servers, which allow people to get faster access to Internet content, services and applications. Cloudflare is one of the biggest CDNs in the world, and it has a free plan for individuals who run personal or hobby projects that are not business critical.
You have probably heard the word "caching" before. In IT speak, caching often means storing files which have been downloaded from the Internet on the local hard drive. When you visit a site, the Internet browser that is installed on your device will connect to the server which stores the assets for the page you intend to open. The server will respond to the request by sending an HTML file which tells the browser how to create and display the desired Internet page. Then, it will send the rest of the needed assets.
If your browser's cache is active (and most browsers do that by default) it will save static assets such as images, HTML, CSS and JavaScript files locally. These files are called "static assets" because their content isn't supposed to change too often. If the site includes a bitmap with its logo, for example, chances are it won't change within the next few days. This way, when the browser is pointed to a previously visited Internet page, it will only download the new content, loading the already existing files from the local cache. Even if you had a great Internet connection, getting the data from a local data storage device will be about 100 times faster, so you will perceive that the website page loads quickly.
CDNs work just like content caches, but this time the content is stored using an array of servers which are located in some of the world's biggest data centers. With traditional hosting, the files that are used for your website may be stored on a server in Idaho, because that is where you may have your business' headquarters, for example. However, you may want to use the power of the Internet to sell your services to people all over the US, and maybe even Canada. When people in Atlanta try to access your site, Internet data has to travel over 2000 miles. That is bad, because your website data needs to pass through dozens of servers, and each one of them will delay the packets.
We all know that people are getting increasingly impatient, and Internet users are people as well. If they want to visit a site and it does not load within 3 seconds or less, many of them will abandon it and try a different one. I'm not making these things up - here's a study from Google that proves it. Therefore, you want your site to load as fast as possible no matter if people try to access it from Idaho, Atlanta, Alberta and even Argentina.
Content Delivery Networks make sure that all the static resources are stored on a server that's close to the website visitors. Any person in Atlanta will be able to access your site at lightning-fast speeds if the site uses a CDN which includes servers that are located in Atlanta. If your website loads fast, people will visit more of its pages, increasing its popularity, and thus rewarding it with higher rankings in search engines. This is a massive advantage, so it's no wonder that huge sites such as Netflix and Facebook have built and use their own CDNs.
Additionally, content distribution networks can protect sites against various cyber attacks, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). And if a server goes down, the content will still be available in other regions of the globe, because the other CDN servers continue to run fine.
Want to use a Content Distribution Network for your business? Contact us and let's get it done!
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