Have you been looking into Content Delivery Networks or CDN lately? Then I won’t be surprised if you\u2019re developing a new web application, creating a new website, or simply looking to transform the architecture of your internet presence.<\/p>\n
Not sure what a CDN is, how it works, or what are its benefits for your business? You\u2019ve come to the right place. Here’s what you need to know.<\/p>\n
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As the name implies, a content delivery network is primarily responsible for delivering content such as web pages, images, videos, and data to users globally, by using a network of servers distributed throughout a number of different geographic locations.<\/p>\n
Essentially, a CDN allows you to duplicate and cache your most important web assets and data, and store them on a server that is geographically close to one of your service areas. When a user tries to visit your website, their traffic request is sent to the nearest server.<\/p>\n
Let’s say, for example, that you are an American company looking to expand into Canada. To improve Canada-based users’ experience on your web platform, you could work with an existing CDN provider. They would duplicate your web platform’s data and store it on servers that are geographically in Canada, closest to the users’ location.<\/p>\n
In other terms, the closer a user is to a \u201cnode\u201d of your content delivery network, the faster their loading times will be, which will improve their experience on your web platform. In addition, the process of delivering a website through a CDN is nearly undetectable by users, so they\u2019ll never even know that this is happening.<\/p>\n
This also allows you to handle more traffic, and provides a number of benefits that we\u2019ll discuss more in-depth in the next section of this post.<\/p>\n
Sounds familiar? Content delivery networks are actually an implementation of edge computing<\/a>.<\/p>\n