What is CDN (Content Delivery Networks) ?
Lets try to understand CDN by an example:
When we type in a web address like www.google.com, our browser is actually asking Google’s servers to send back all of the resources needed to display that page. That includes things like the code to position search results, to manage what happens when you run a new query and whatever the latest flavor of their logo is. All of those things have to be downloaded over wires that can run for quite a long distance. A CDN is a transparent way to physically move many of the resources of a webpage closer to our computer.
For web developers who choose to use a CDN, instead of just chucking every file in one central folder on the server, certain files can instead be placed on their content delivery network. It may seem like we’re just putting those files in a different bin, but the CDN automatically distributes copies of those resources to specialized servers located in many geographically distinct regions. Later, when that page’s URL is typed into a browser, depending on where we are physically in the world, the closest server in the CDN is the one that actually feeds those resources to our browser. By shortening the distance, the various components of the webpage have to travel, content delivery networks help to lower the time it takes to start seeing that page, while reducing the opportunity for transmission errors.
Content delivery networks are a way to minimize the travel time between our browser and the page resources needed to show a site. From a real-world perspective, the Romans themselves had content delivery networks for their water in the form of their aqueducts, and the markets for their food where we earned a lightning bolt. Every solution merchant has access to our CDN. Taking advantage of this technology can help our customers get around to our site up to 60% faster.
The Internet is a network of networks. To get content from a server on the other side of the planet, IP packets have to travel through a series of backbone servers and public network cables.
CDNs augment the transport network by employing various techniques to optimize content delivery. It is fairly easy to see how CDNs help by looking at how the Internet works. A trace route to an Internet address tells us how many network hops a simple request takes.
Benefits of using CDN
1. Google Ranking
Google has made it clear that page load time is one of the search engine factor. By using a CDN, we will be speeding up our site by a great extent.
Moreover, it will help you reduce the bounce rate which is also good for SEO. For any website, the faster it loads, the better it is.
2. More Conversions and Sales
Because our site loads faster, our readers and clients will be much happier. Where there are happy clients, there are more sales.
It would be pretty frustrated to do business with someone whose website took ages to load.
3. Handle More Traffic
Whenever if our blog posts go viral, our server gets a huge amount of traffic. Many times, our site crashes and gives errors like: “Internal server error” or “Database error”.
With a good content delivery network service, we can easily minimize such down times and our site can handle a lot more traffic.
4. Reduce Hosting Cost
When we are using dedicated or VPS hosting or any limited bandwidth hosting, using a CDN will reduce our costs by a great margin.
CDNs are way cheaper than web hosting, and since our files will be served from CDN servers, we need not worry about the bandwidth cost of your web hosting.
