CDN Featured Article

Content Delivery Networks or CDNs have revolutionized web hosting in a few short years. If you wanted to host a website a decade ago, you had to host it on one server. Now, with a CDN, you can distribute your files across multiple systems. You have likely benefited from a CDN without even realising it - why would host your own videos for example, when you can use YouTube (News - Alert) or Vimeo?

You might think that only humongous sites like Amazon or Facebook would be in need of a CDN, but you’d be wrong. There are a number of pressing reasons why a CDN is crucial for small & mid-size websites and companies operating today. With a CDN, all assets are downloaded quickly and concurrently, and a smoother surfing experience is guaranteed. Check out our reasons below.

Advantages of a CDN

Browsers only allow a limited number of simultaneous downloads to a single domain. Most will only permit four active downloads at once, so a fifth will be blocked until one of the other downloads is complete. You have likely experienced this yourself, if you have ever tried to download of lot of large files from the same website. CDNs on the other hand, host all of their files on different domains. These static resources could be videos, images, Javascript, HTML5 shims - everything you need to get your site up on your user’s screen. But because the browser registers a single CDN as another domain, the user can download an extra four files at the same time.

CDNs also promote uniformity online. Jquery, a Javascript library, is common across the web. If a user visits your site, there is a good chance they have already visited a site using the Google (News - Alert) CDN. Elements of the site will already have been cached, and will not need to be downloaded again.

Distributed Data Centers

Theoretically, the closer the user is to the content source, the quicker the delivery. If your main web server is based in Atlanta, users from Asia and Europe are going to have to make a few time-consuming digital jumps across the Pacific. CDNs provide localized data centers which gets your content closer to your users. As a result users will experience fewer network spikes, less jitter when streaming, and an overall improved streaming quality. Due to this improved reliability, operators can deliver a high level of service with high quality content, low network server loads, and as a result, lower costs. When content is spread across several servers as opposed to dumping it all onto the one, you get faster downloads and happier users.

By distributing data centers like this and strategically placing servers in a CDN, you can reach a high backbone capacity and significantly increase the number of users that can access your network at any given time. Let us say for example that your network has 50GB/s network backbone, with 1 tb/s capacity. Only 50GB/s can be delivered. That changes with a CDN. Ten different servers available at ten different strategic locations provides, you guessed it, ten times that initial backbone. Additionally many CDN providers implement TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) acceleration technology to boost performance and thereby further improve user experience. Combined with the decreased latency of a CDN, your already capable network will be able to deliver extremely high levels of content. And due to the distribution of assets across many different regions CDN websites enjoy complete availability, even in the midst of network problems, hardware issues or power outages.

High-Capacity Infrastructure

You might be reasonably pleased with your hosting, but I’d be willing to bet that it doesn’t match the scalability or capacity of Yahoo, Microsoft (News - Alert) or Google. With a CDN, you can lower the server load on the network backbone and interconnect private and public peers, ultimately decreasing delivery cost and releasing capacity. A CDN will offer built-in version control, allowing you to link to a particular version of a CSS (News - Alert) file or Javascript library. High-end CDNs can also lower packet loss and lower network latency due to a shorter distance travelled - what’s not to like?

Usage Analytics

Many commercial CDNs compile usage reports, as they usually charge per byte. When you’re studying your site statistics on a daily basis in the hopes of furthering your website, these reports can be a real help. They can supplement your own website analytics and grant greater insight into how your downloads and videos are performing.

Save Money

For many, CDNs are a welcome alternative to investing in costly infrastructure and juggling separate service providers around the world. A CDN can reduce costs by eliminating the need to pay for high-priced foreign hosting, and are ideal for those with a set budget. They offer a single platform that can work concurrently across regions.

You can make your websites & apps faster by hosting your files on private commercial CDNs like MaxCDN, the Amazon S3 and Microsoft Windows Azure. Additionally, you can save some of the cost by using coupons available on Frugaa.com.

In Conclusion

There are a few downsides to using CDNs (maintenance chief among them) but for many it can be a great way to distribute the file load and save bandwidth, all while reducing existing hosting costs.