CDN service, advantages of its use and when to use it

CDN service, advantages of its use and when to use it

Im sure many of you have heard the acronym, CDN (CONTENT DISTRIBUTION NETWORK). A CDN is a network of servers spread around the world and connected to each other, so when a query arrives at a resource, the server closest to the site where it was made replies, in order to minimize the bandwidth required and minimize the waiting time of users. Every day we interact with a CDN, when we read a news item on a website, when we make online purchases, when we access a Youtube video or in interactions with social networks. How does the information travel without CDN? The information is shared no matter where a user is geographically, it is requested directly from the originating content server, which can be a great distance away from the user requesting it. How does the information travel with CDN? The perimeter servers distribute data from static websites to visitors who are close to their geographical area. The connection is faster because it is housed in nodes closer to each other. This results in a faster web browsing experience. The main advantages that we can obtain when implementing a CDN within a website are:

1. Increase the caching of website content and as a consequence reduce the loading time of it.
2. It reduces the bandwidth consumption of your server, reducing your web server scaling headaches.
3. It buffers the web server’s need to manage capacity spikes due to traffic bursts.
4. The geographical barrier disappears, so it is easier to serve content anywhere in the world and leads to a better international web positioning.
5. Adds an extra security point, blocking spammers and fake bots and attacks on your website.
6. It can save you money, since the CDN serves a large amount of content with not impact on our server.

A CDN is useful when you have users in different countries and when the pages include a lot of static resources(content). It is recommended that the pages with intensive use of traffic have a CDN, since the traffic load is distributed optimally. In addition, when many files are transferred, a CDN can be very beneficial, especially when many images or many videos are played.