Content Delivery Network (CDN) – Netmediablog

What is Content Delivery Network (CDN):

A content delivery network is a system of interconnected computers (servers) that serves web contents quickly based on users proximity.  The demands for a faster internet lead to the development of this concept. Multiple copies of web contents are duplicated and stored on different computers interconnected in a network so that it is quickly served to a web user based on proximity.

How does a Content Delivery Network work?

Content Delivery Network effectively and quickly serve your website’s files through hundreds of servers instead of through a single host. Web content is served to a site visitor based on proximity. Let me make it simpler to understand for a layman, let’s say I hosted Netmediablog on a CDN, the files will be duplicated to multiple servers worldwide, so if you visit my blog from USA, the files that will be delivered or served to your browser will be from one or more of the CDN servers in the United States while someone in Tokyo will be served from maybe China or Japan servers at the same time.

What are the advantages of a Content Delivery Network?

Content Delivery Network will make your site load faster and rank higher in search engines. Google and other search engines love fast sites. The advantages of Content Delivery Network are numerous. Research has shown that fast loading sites have more conversions, and this will definitely mean more revenue. Visitors also love fast loading websites and the best part is the SEO advantage. Google considers site speed in their ranking algorithm, so Content Delivery Network will definitely mean faster site loading and higher search engine ranking.

Another advantage of Content Delivery Network technology is that it provides a fail-safe option to your site as your site can never be totally offline since if one server fails there are hundreds of that to serve your web content to your visitors.

Disadvantages of Content Delivery Network:

It’s definite that anything that has advantages has disadvantages as well. Unfortunately there are few disadvantages to Content Delivery Network which include:

1. Cost
2. Support
3. Maintenance

Is Content Delivery Network a performance booster?

Yes! Content Delivery Network is a performance booster. When a specific request is made by your site visitor, the Content Delivery Network service resolves the closest server to that visitor and serve content faster from it. There are minimum number of nodes between the server and the visitor because it has been dynamically determined by the Content Delivery Network and this optimizes the speed at which the content is served to the visitor.

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