CDN stands for Content Delivery Network and it helps distribute web content more efficiently by caching and delivering it closer to users. This can speed up the delivery of web pages, preventing them from being slowed down by traffic and congestion on the internet.
In other words, by using CDN, we can access the required data faster. This network provides the stored content to the user using servers distributed worldwide and based on the user’s geographical location through the server closest to the user. This service effectively increases content delivery speed and bandwidth on high-traffic websites and global websites such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.
How Does a CDN Work?
Consider a user in Singapore attempting to open a website, say one that offers streaming services. To get every asset on the page, the user sends a request to the web server. The page might have text, pictures, HTML, and dynamic material. Anywhere in the world could be the origin server’s location, say it takes place in North America. Now this origin server, which houses all the content on the webpage, must send it all the way across the world to the user’s browser. This basic geographical reality can lead to delays and performance problems.
The data can be kept in the local PoPs that are established closer to the end user when a CDN is enabled. When requested, these PoPs quickly transmit the cached files from the web page to the user, accelerating page load time. The user’s requested files will be loaded from the origin if the CDN does not already have them.
All static data can be cached in a CDN network so that it can be provided to the user from the nearest server throughout this large network worldwide. Static assets, including images, JavaScript, CSS, etc., does not need to be updated, but other parts that include the content of the pages and are read from the database are not stored in the CDN network and are directly loaded from the server itself.
Advantages of CDN
Using a CDN can give more power to your origin server and bring many benefits to the website and business in which you use a CDN, among which the following can be mentioned:
- CDN speeds up the loading of web pages in the visitor’s system as it loads data from the nearest server.
- It increases the security of websites because most of the connections are indirect, distributed, and protected.
- It increases the free bandwidth and reduces the consumption of the main traffic of the server.
- Installing a CDN is easy and simple.
- It increases website optimization in search engines such as Google.
- Using a CDN is a great way to prevent DDOS attacks on the website server.
Disadvantages of CDN
It is idealistic to talk only about the content delivery network and think that this complex service has only advantages and is free of any cons! Here are some disadvantages you may need to consider:
- It Adds to Your Expenses
The costs associated with employing a CDN are by far its biggest drawback. Since CDNs are often best for websites with high traffic, they frequently cost a sizable sum of money.
- Server’s Location Cannot Be Random
CDNs won’t be much use to you if your audience’s location and the location of CDN servers aren’t in sync. Therefore, it’s crucial to understand the location of your audience and have the CDN servers situated appropriately.
- It Will Need Technical Support
Because CDNs are typically run across third-party infrastructures, addressing a problem may require excessive back-and-forth communication.
How Does CDN Help SEO?
One of the most significant benefits of CDNs is to help increase the speed of loading and sharing information. Therefore, it is easy to understand that CDN can play an important role in ranking your website in search engines.
The CDN system uses standard and temporary caching algorithms that will significantly help your website’s SEO. These algorithms even allow you to deal with the problem of duplicate or similar content. The content that has been recently published by your website is included in the list of the latest information stored in CDNs and stored in the cached form on all servers.
CDN also helps the images on your website to be indexed faster in search engine results pages (SERPs). So if you’ve uploaded your images to CDN servers, more users and search engine bots will have faster access to them, resulting in a much greater potential to get views faster.
CDN and Security
A website can increase security and protect itself from many types of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks by employing a CDN. DDoS attacks often aim to flood a target server with so many requests that it freezes and is unable to reply to any of them, taking down the target website.
With a CDN, the edge servers rather than the origin server handle the majority of the content delivery to requests. As a result, it is more difficult for the attacker to directly target the origin server. As content is supplied from the edge servers’ cache rather than the origin server when an origin server is down due to a DDoS assault, the website may nevertheless appear to be operational to the end user.
How Does CDN Work with DNS?
The initial step when a web browser requests a resource is to send a DNS request. An IP address is what the browser expects to receive in response to a DNS request, which is similar to looking up a phone number in a phone book. For subsequent queries, the browser can then directly connect to the web server using the IP address (there are several layers of DNS caching, but that’s outside the scope of this piece). A domain name may have a single IP address for a blog or a small business website, but it may have many IP addresses for a major online application.
There is a tiny difference between the procedure for large, multi-IP sites and small, one-IP sites when the browser sends a DNS request for a domain name that is handled by a CDN. The domain name’s DNS server examines the incoming request to choose the appropriate group of servers to handle it.
In its most basic form, the DNS server uses the IP address of the DNS resolver to perform a geographic lookup and then returns the IP address of an edge server that is geographically nearest to the area. Therefore, if you submit a request and the DNS resolver you’re sent to is in America, You’ll receive an IP address for a server on the west side of the planet; if you submit the same request through a DNS resolver in Malaysia, you’ll receive an IP address for a server on the east side of the globe. It’s possible that you won’t find a DNS resolver in the same region where you sent the request. Although, this process may be slightly different if the CDN provider uses an Anycast Network.
CDN vs. Web Hosting
Web hosting and CDNs are most effective when used as complementary pairs. Most web hosting services only offer users a single server location. While CDNs offer numerous servers across the globe, they can only cache static data from your web server and are not a substitute for web servers or origin servers.
A CDN works by ensuring that data is delivered closer to the website, thus improving the speed of the website by reducing the time and effort required for data to be transported over longer distances. In general, CDN servers host only static data and serve that data in cached formats only to end users. This reduces workload and allows CDNs to concentrate more effectively on their primary function, edge delivery.
Is CDN Just a Cache?
In essence, caching is the act of storing information on a computer for a specific period. However, while CDNs perform caching, not all caching services are CDNs and not all CDNs do is caching.
Introducing Popular CDN Providers
In this section, we will take a look at the best CDN providers in the world.
Google Cloud CDN
One of the most-known cloud service providers is Google, which has also offered its services for CDN. Google Cloud CDN is already recognized as a good CDN with more than 70 PoPs worldwide. You can easily activate your Cloud CDN with a few simple clicks.
Amazon CloudFront
Another powerful CDN is provided by AWS (Amazon Web Services). Amazon has an extensive and powerful network of servers that covers all regions worldwide and allows you to configure the CDN by country, caching live or dynamic content as well.
CloudFront offers a free trial plan for 12 months, allowing 50GB of data transfer and 2,000,000 HTTPS monthly requests. The interesting thing about Amazon’s CDN is that its prices vary depending on where you are.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare is a famous American CDN. With its good user interface, this service has made it easy to do specialized work. Cloudflare is easy to set up and requires no code editing. You just need to update your DNS and use Cloudflare. One of the reasons for Cloudflare’s popularity is its security. If you want to set up this service for your site, don’t worry about its security.
ArvanCloud
ArvanCloud is a high-tech company in the field of cloud technology that started its work in 2015. With dozens of cloud products and capabilities, such as content distribution networks (CDN), cloud servers, video platforms, cloud containers, object storage, online business infrastructure, supply organizations, and startups.
Having 40 pop sites worldwide, ArvanCloud responds to the infrastructure needs of more than 100,000 local and foreign customers and tries to support new and growing businesses by offering economical pricing and free packages for each product. You can easily enable ArvanCloud CDN with one click free of charge.
Final Thought
In this article, we talked about CDN, its functionality, advantages, and disadvantages. We strongly recommend using a CDN if you have a website or are starting to set it up. If you have any questions in this regard, feel free to ask in the comments.
