What is a CDN and What is the Benefit of Using One?

When we create a website, we want to be able to give our end users the best experience they can get. We don’t want to risk setting up a page that is going to be down all the time, and we don’t want the loading time to be dozens of seconds.

At the same time, we want to be able to protect our data and information from hacks and attacks, and we don’t want to spend too much money on the process. This may sound like something that is impossible to get, but with current technologies, you can get all that and more. Keep on reading to find out more about this, and learn what a CDN is and what are the benefits of using one.

What is it?

Source: corenet.co.rs

The first thing we are going to start with is explaining what this is. The abbreviation stands for content delivery network and now we are going to explain more about it.

When we need to create a website, all of our data is located on one server. The problem with this is that that server may not be able to satisfy our needs, or it may just be too unstable for us. When a breach happens, that server is the only one that needs to get hacked so that others can get on our network, and when there is a power issue or any other problem, our main server can be affected and we can either lose our data, or our page just won’t open or load.

With a CDN, there is a distributed group of servers that operate together to minimize all the issues that come from one server only, and all of our data is stored on several ones instead of just one server.

The biggest benefit from it, which we are going to talk about further down in this article is the speed of data transfer, instead of relying only on one server, several of them are put together to allow faster speeds, improved loading times, and just overall better information sharing.

If you want to find out more about the content delivery network services, along with the plans you can choose, and their advantages, you can visit lightningcloud.net.

What are the benefits of it?

Now that you know more about the content delivery network, let’s see how you can benefit from it. We are going to try and give you more information on the many solutions it offers and how you can get the best out of it, no matter the size of your brand.

Improved performance

The number one benefit is that the page speed and website performance are going to be increased. We never want to spend too much time waiting for a site to load, and if we are bound to do that, chances are, we are just going to close the page and move on. With the CDN, the content can be delivered much faster from the server to the end user, and with that, the end user is going to be much happier and stay on the site longer.

Source: searchenginejournal.com

Improved security

All of the sites on the internet are potential victims of attacks, and even if you just opened your page, chances are, it will be randomly attacked in less than a week. Bigger sites and brands get targeted for serious attacks, and hackers do everything they can to at least bring the site down and cause the business to lose profits.

With this type of network, you are going to get easily defended from DoS and DDoS attacks, and hackers are going to be less likely to be able to breach your page. The site will stay online no matter how much traffic is thrown on them, and your users will be able to conduct their business on your page at all times.

Lower costs

You may think that not everyone can afford CDN and you may think that these servers are reserved only for those who can invest tens of thousands each week on their site maintenance.

You should know that since data does not have to travel to the origin server all the time, the costs are going to be reduced. You will decrease the bandwidth costs and the network capacity costs. Ultimately, this will lead to you spending less and being able to make bigger profits.

Nevertheless, it all depends on the plan that you have chosen, so make sure you do your research, compare prices, and see what works best for your current situation and future aspirations.

Source: enterprisenetworkingplanet.com

It is more reliable

As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, when several servers work together, they are much more reliable than just one of them. This means that even if one of them goes down, or if the network gets congested, this is not going to affect our page or its speed in any one. The service will go uninterrupted, and all the data and signal will just bounce from one server to the other so the strongest one will be the one that makes up for the one that is currently down.

The network traffic will be balanced at all times, meaning that even if you get a hundred views one day on your page, and the next day you go viral and your site gets opened million times, it will not affect the loading speed and the page will not go down at any moment.

There is a failover process that happens when one server goes down, and when one network is overloaded, and in this case, the data is just automatically transferred to the others. The easiest way to explain this process is to compare it with the map on your phone. When you enter a destination and you see that one road is completely blocked with traffic the assistant will give you another route that you can take so that you don’t end up stuck. The same goes for the failover process on the content delivery network.

The benefits we mentioned are just a fraction of the numerous advantages you will be getting with combined servers instead of just relying on one. No matter how popular your page is right now and no matter how big or small your brand is, it is always better to rely on something trustworthy than to just wait and hope that something won’t go wrong.