Many hosting providers, including Get Interactive, offer the option of using a Content Delivery Network (or CDN). A CDN can be a valuable addition to your website or application. On this page we will tell you what a CDN exactly entails, how they work, and why they provide great benefits.
What is a CDN (Global Content Delivery Network)?
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a group of internationally distributed servers that are connected to each other. A CDN allows users to retrieve the needed data for your website from the nearest server, allowing your website to be used faster internationally.
For example, it is a lot faster for a user in Japan to load your website from a server in Japan, rather than a server located in the Netherlands. A CDN synchronizes your website across the different servers, allowing users to load your website quickly and without delay from the fastest server.
Not only the website pages, but also content such as videos, images and documents are automatically synchronized worldwide by the CDN. The main purpose of a CDN is to reduce the time it takes to transmit a website’s content and media to international users.
“The main purpose of a CDN is to reduce the time it takes to transmit a website’s content and media to international users.”
How a Global Content Delivery Network Works
CDN providers cache your website’s data in their own network or third-party data centers. When a user requests the content of a website that is stored in the cache of a CDN, the request will be redirected to the server closest to the user. This process is invisible to the user.
Many international organizations already use CDNs to cache their website content. We are also seeing increasing demand for CDN services, now that more websites offer streaming video, e-commerce and cloud applications, for which fast and secure data delivery is essential. CDN architecture is designed to reduce the network latency caused by transporting data over long distances and across different networks.
Additional security through a Global Content Delivery Network
Because a CDN is located at the ”edge of a network” so to speak, it also has the ability to aid in security, for example, Firewalls, anti-Bot and DDos protection.
In the case of an DDos attack, a large number of computers, often from different locations around the world, connect to a single server. However, this server can only handle a limited number of requests at a time. Comparable to a traffic jam on the highway, the huge amount of traffic makes the server much slower than usual, or even unusable for the user. A CDN can offer extra protection against this, and ensures through its distributed network that a number of visitors can still use the website in the event of an attack.
Want to know more about DDos? Be sure to read our blog on this topic.
Advantages of a Global Content Delivery Network for your website
The added value of a CDN should be clear by now: delivering content through a network of servers in a secure and efficient manner. In addition to websites, many other services use CDN, such as mobile applications, streaming, gaming, downloads, social media and search engines.
Here is what a CDN specifically helps with:
- Efficiency: A CDN improves the loading time of web pages. This can have a positive impact on your Page Speed ranking from Google, and thus your SEO position.
- Ease of use: Users will find a slow-loading website frustrating and might even leave it while loading. This can be prevented with a CDN.
- Security: CDNs improve security with services such as Firewalls and protection against DDos attacks.
- Availability: CDNs can handle more traffic and are better at avoiding network outages. The result is that your website’s online status is more stable.
- Cost reduction: CDNs reduce the bandwidth consumption of your website or service, which can reduce your hosting costs.
Here are some concrete examples of what CDNs are used for:
- Webshop: for keeping content available during the peaks of the selling season, when many visitors use the webshop.
- Bank: to safely send sensitive data.
- Mobile Provider: accelerating loading times and response times in order to improve the user experience.
Why is a Global Content Delivery Network right for you?
CDNs are mainly used for websites with an international target audience. Do you have a service or company that operates internationally or are you planning to do so? Then we definitely recommend using a CDN. Are you wondering whether a CDN is of added value for your website? We will gladly take a look and advise you.
At Get Interactive we use a very large and reliable network from Cloudflare to protect our clients against DDos attacks, also known as DDos mitigation. Cloudflare offers extensive protection against DDos attacks for Websites, applications and networks with security measures such as a built-in DDos blocker and DNSSEC, combined with a very fast response time.
Besides Cloudflare we also use other tools to protect your website. Think of a Virus Scanner, security scans and a Firewall. All these components make your website safer and make it more difficult for malicious parties to access it.
Get Interactive offers several hosting options with a CDN solution. Would you like to discuss your webhosting needs and CDN further? Please contact us, we are happy to help you!