A dedicated server is a solution that can give a powerful start to your digital projects. Among numerous variables to consider, the latency and hence the page load speed is crucial for providing your users with a smooth experience and increasing your SEO rankings.
While choosing the right location with an eye on your target audience is critical, often there is no possibility of covering all the necessary regions just with a single location. One of the strategies that can be helpful in this regard is going for a Content Distribution Network solution. Let’s have a look at what CDN is, how it works, and how it may be helpful for developing your web projects.
What is CDN?
In 1988, the first full-length image was transmitted over the internet – a grainy picture of a Norwegian band called The Wailes. It took a staggering 72 minutes to download. The sheer volume of downloads overwhelmed servers.
Today, high-definition videos stream seamlessly across continents in seconds. This dramatic shift in speed and accessibility is made possible with the powerful, behind-the-scenes technology of CDN.
CDN refers to a Content Distribution Network and is basically a network of servers that are distributed geographically and used to distribute content more efficiently to the end users.
They offer optimized content delivery, minimal load speed, scalability, load balancing and several other benefits acting as a global network of data warehouses that bring your content closer to your audience, ensuring lightning-fast load times and a seamless user experience.
When you click on a website, the server closest to you springs into action, delivering the website’s data to your device. They are the reason why a user in London can access a website hosted in New York with minimal delay.
Today, with users accustomed to instant gratification, a slow-loading website can be a death knell for conversions. This is why CDNs can be an excellent choice for companies whose target audience is geographically spread over a wide area particularly when it comes to large business websites with heavy traffic and lots of web content.
It is hoped that this introduction to CDN has been informative.
How does an infrastructure with a CDN work?
An infrastructure featuring a CDN consists of three types of servers – origin servers, edge servers, and DNS servers.
An origin server is the main server of your website or application. It is responsible for the functioning of your website and contains all the original and up-to-date content.
Edge servers are servers that comprise the CDN. They are located at different geographical spots and contain copies of the pages of your website and different pieces of content that are stored originally on the origin server. Edge servers store cached copies of pages from your origin server so they are better accessible to your website’s visitors from different geographic regions.
DNS servers are regularly responsible for resolving domain names into IP addresses. Integrated into a CDN infrastructure, instead of directing the user to the origin server, the DNS server opts for the closest location to them, so the user accesses the cached information on an optimal edge server.
This is how a CDN works. The necessary content from the origin server is stored in cached form on edge servers, so users from different parts of the globe can access it much more quickly. There are different ways how CDN can be used to store content. This can be either entire web pages or separate pieces of content, especially when it comes to bulky multimedia files.
Also, edge servers can either keep a copy of your entire website which is updated from time to time or they can keep parts of content, those that have been requested recently with an eye on storing the disk space.
Benefits of using a DNS server for your business
Now that we know about the principle of operating a CDN network, let’s see what kind of advantages for your business you can get from it.
- Minimal latency at global reach: A server in a favorable location can provide you with minimal latency in the region around that location. A well-made CDN from a reputable provider can offer you global reach, minimizing latency and load speed regardless of where your website’s visitors are. If you have your potential target audience is scattered across multiple regions in different spots of the globe, opting for a CDN is a necessary strategy for making your website universally accessible for you its visitors never have to wait for ages.
- Load balancing and traffic optimization: If your website is frequently visited by hundreds of users regularly, which can be the case if you have a target audience all over the globe, using multiple servers instead of just a single one can often save the day.
- Backup: If for this or that technical reason, your origin server experiences downtime, with a CDN this won’t mean that your website will become unavailable since the cached copies of your pages and your content will be still accessible to your site’s visitors.
- Scalability: A CDN can also be very helpful during traffic spikes. In the rush ours, your origin server itself can be overwhelmed with requests. In this case, a CDN can smartly redirect this traffic to the nearest edge servers.
- Better security and DDoS protection: CDN can often have additional security features in-built, with DDoS mitigation, Web Application Firewall (WAF), SSL/TLS encryption, or bot detection/prevention is frequently offered. These features can be particularly efficient when deployed over a geographically distributed network of servers.
Default DNS servers offer little to no control over security features. Dedicated DNS providers often offer advanced security functionalities like DNS filtering. This allows businesses to block access to malicious websites or categories of websites (e.g., gambling, social media) that can be distractions or productivity drains for employees.
- Content optimization and acceleration: A CDN doesn’t only contribute to the content load speed by bringing it closer to end users, but can also offer additional measures on optimizing the content delivery, like image compression, minification of CSS and JavaScript files, and file caching.
End Note
Next time you’re troubleshooting a slow website, check if it’s a CDN issue! Some browsers allow you to temporarily disable CDNs to isolate the problem. A speedy website is not just about convenience; it’s about customer satisfaction and conversion rates. Make sure your CDN is doing its job!
Let’s keep the conversation going – what content delivery challenges do you face, and how do you envision the future of CDNs? If you have any ideas to share drop us a line or may be write a guest and submit it for us to review at contact@alltechmagazine.com.
Image Credit: hostzealot.com
