CDN

Stands for “Content Delivery Network.” A CDN is a bunch of servers distributed in several areas. Small CDNs could also be situated inside a single nation, whereas massive CDNs are unfold throughout information facilities around the globe.

CDNs are used to supply content material to customers in several areas as shortly as attainable. For instance, a person in San Francisco could obtain web site content material from a server in Los Angeles, whereas a person in England could obtain the identical content material from a server in London. This is achieved using information replication, which shops the identical information on a number of servers. Whenever you entry a web site hosted on a CDN, the network will intelligently give you the content material using the server closest to the your geographical location.

By offering Internet-based content material over a CDN, massive companies can keep away from bottlenecks related to serving information from a single location. It additionally helps restrict the impression of safety breaches, resembling denial of service assaults. If {hardware} fails on one server, the CDN can shortly reroute visitors to the subsequent best server, limiting and even eliminating downtime.

While CDNs are sometimes used to host web sites, they’re generally used to supply different forms of downloadable information as properly. Examples embrace software program applications, images, movies, and streaming media. Cloud computing companies are sometimes offered over content material supply networks as properly. Since CDNs robotically select the most effective server for every person, there is no such thing as a have to manually select essentially the most environment friendly location, like some FTP obtain companies require.

NOTE: While CDNs are sometimes accessed through customary URLs, many CDNs embrace the letters “cdn” of their net deal with.