What is CDN and how does it work?

CDN, or Content Delivery Network, is a service that delivers website files closer to the user’s geographic location to improve page loading speed.

CDN servers are located geographically in different locations and work in a single solution to ensure the delivery of Internet content. CDN is a high-performance content delivery network built for streaming large-format files, videos, as well as various multimedia content, e-commerce, mass media and online ads globally. This speeds up content delivery time using the nearest CDN server, reduces the load and delay of the band network, and speeds up site loading time. CDN technology is able to capture any user stream while protecting the website from Dos attacks.

The popularity of CDN services continues to grow, and today most websites’ data traffic is served through CDN, including data feed from major sites such as Facebook, Netflix and Amazon.

How does CDN work?

CDN’s mission is to reduce the annoying delay of trying to access a website or video streaming before it is fully loaded onto your device. Although they are milliseconds, the process can seem timeless and can even cause a loading error or timeout. CDN is based on a network of servers that are connected to provide content as quickly, cheaply, reliably and securely as possible. To improve speed and connectivity, cdn will deploy servers at interchange points between different networks.

For example, you have decided to watch a movie online – CDN finds the optimal server on its network to show this video. Usually it’s the server closest to your physical location. Media files will be cached and will remain on this content delivery network server for requests from other users in the same geographic area. If the requested content is unavailable or out of date, the CDN service will save the newly brought content to meet any future requests. Although the delivery of site content is a common use of CDN, it is not their only function. In principle, all data that can be digitized can be delivered through a content delivery network – 4K and HD quality video, audio streaming, software downloads such as apps, games and OS updates, and much more.

What are the benefits of using CDN?

Improving the speed of loading a website – when delivering the content of the website, visitors experience faster loading time of the page using the adjacent CDN server. As users are more likely to leave sites that load slowly, CDN can reduce bounce rate and increase the amount of time people spend on your website. In other words, a faster website means that more users will visit your site and stay longer on the site.

Increasing the availability and backup of content – accessibility means that content is available to end-users even during periods of excessive user traffic, when many people want to access the content at the same time, or when some parts of the Internet have server disruptions. Large amounts of data flow or hardware errors can interfere with the normal operation of the website. CDN can process much larger data traffic and withstand hardware interference better than many basic servers.

Improving website security – malicious attacks on organizations can cost a lot of money. DDoS and web attacks have been found to be the most expensive.
CDN can also improve the security of your site by ensuring mitigation of the above-mentioned DDoS attacks, improvements to security certificates and other optimizations.
Given the growing trend of internet threats, the security of websites is an essential requirement for CDN. Today’s state-of-the-art content delivery networks have made information security a basic rule by providing unique cloud-based solutions. CDN protects content providers and users by reducing various attacks on websites so that malicious entities never compromise the delivery and availability of data.

Since the Internet was not originally designed to meet the demand for huge amounts of data, high-definition video (HD) live streams, flashy, large-scale sales and large downloads, CDNs were created to improve the performance of the Internet. They help securely deliver the media on a large scale and provide all the connected opportunities that are a big part of our daily lives in the 21st century. We install CDN for all of the links we develop at WD Market so that our customers’ websites are fast and accessible to users from anywhere in the world.