What is a CDN (Content Delivery Network)?

The Content Delivery Network or CDN for its acronym in English Content Delivery Network is a set of servers that are installed in different locations to allow access to content in a fairly wide geographical area.

This is why the CDN is defined as a service that is responsible for distributing static content (videos, documents, images, music, etc.) more efficiently… to servers that are closer in the geography of the visitor who is entering. to the web

The improvement in efficiency is achieved with a so-called load balancing in which the servers that are responsible for hosting the content as well as the links that are responsible for interconnecting the different elements of the network are subject. In order to be able to eliminate obstacles in order to serve the data in relation to the user’s geographical proximity global seo services is a Long-term strategy that continues to yield benefits over time, ensuring sustained digital success.

In simpler terms, the CDN is responsible for replicating the content in different networks and countries and then directing user requests to the copies closest to their geographic network.

Thanks to the geographical distribution of the data, servers are prevented from being paralyzed due to excess requests… which leads to minimizing delays because the path that takes you to the content is the shortest possible.

How does a CDN work?

This “Digital Age” has been forced to optimize the loading time of web pages because data is not sent in a linear or direct way like TV or radio. Instead, they are sent through different nodes (server in which the data is hosted) that are spread throughout the world.

When a user does a search on a certain web server, even if it seems that the page they want to visit responds to them. Who is behind everything is the CDN.

The CDN is like the installation of the web in a geographic cloud available to the closest users. The final objective of this Content Distribution Network is to optimize the user experience on the web by returning quality to the connection load.

When a significant number of users request access to a certain website and there is no CDN that provides more remote access to their geographical location, it happens that the website takes too long to load and even the connection fails or indicates that it is collapsed.

That is why the Content Distribution Network delivers the files from the server so that they can arrive more quickly and thus long loading times are avoided and the number of high accesses is reduced.

An example of this would be that when a user in Japan requires access to a website in Spain, the Japanese Content Distribution Network gives them a copy (data that is stored in the cache) of the page and the loading becomes much faster. without interruptions and without the browsers of other users who also want to access that website collapsing.

In other words, it is a decongestion that relies on a copy of the web page on different servers and in different parts of the world so that users who require access to it do not have to wait for the information to move back and forth. to the server where it is hosted.

Benefits of using a content delivery network

The benefits of a content distribution network depend on certain characteristics of the website in question such as size, location (related to the main traffic source) and the amount of traffic it generates. All this because if it is a local company it does not need to have great visibility in the world.

Bandwidth reduction

There are different benefits to using these servers, one of which is the saving of bandwidth, which allows a reduction in traffic, which leads to avoiding extra costs associated with web hosting. Therefore, by maintaining a certain amount of bandwidth, which, although necessary to manage your traffic when your points of presence multiply, costs are kept low.

This process is achieved when data is temporarily placed in different caches to move the information closer to the user.

Increase in speed

The faster a web page loads, the greater the chances that it can be navigated because users do not have much patience when waiting.

The most common problem is the dormant state that pages can generate, decreasing the loading speed and causing the website to bounce. This state known as latency is the time required for the transmission of information from the source to a specific user and vice versa.

This waiting time causes delays in reading and processing data. In the way this data is transmitted and how it propagates in relation to the speed of travel. Therefore, it is better to have a CDN and thus avoid all this.

Improved security

Although CDNs create copies of different web pages to facilitate access, they also block scrapers, spammers, fake bots, etc. Protecting your website from denial of service (Dodos) attacks.

Without a CDN, the website is quite vulnerable to these Dodos attacks that are created to bring down the service, filling network connections. These attacks come from several places at the same time, which carry a high risk of generating a considerable decrease in speed in order to prevent users from accessing the website.

CDNs protect websites by absorbing the load automatically and also solve the problem when the attack targets the files it contains.

Improve your SEO strategy

Loading speed is a very relevant factor for Google when granting a position in the SERPs to any web page. As the CDN improves loading times, this will lead to an improvement in your SEO positioning strategy, in addition to providing users with a quick response on their mobile devices.