What Are Content Delivery Networks?
Content delivery networks, often abbreviated as CDN, are series of different servers that contain multiple copies of the data that you want to hold on your site. By adding instant mirrors to your data, content delivery networks increase the redundancy of your data, and therefore shorten the time it would take to access it.
CDN’s are usually built using TCP connections, and when set up correctly, provide 100% availability to users. Users are instantly redirected from one computer to the next, should the original computer be unavailable for service. This means that content delivery networks makes your site a lot more reliable.
Why Get CDN For Your Site?
Content delivery networks are a great way to speed up your site’s loading abilities. Most of the time, sites which use CDN to increase their loading speed also increase the amount of bandwidth that they can use at any given time. Most of the major sites that feature large amounts of content use control delivery networks to speed up the loading time of their pages.
In a nutshell, getting content delivery networks as a way to boost your current site’s hosting service is a great way to improve speed, make downloads more manageable, and also improve the overall quality of your site in terms of browsing. It’s almost always a must for rapid live streaming.
Terminology Associated With Content Delivery Networks
There are a lot of different buzzwords used with CDN work, so it’s important to know the different kinds of terms you might run into.
- TCP – This stands for Transmission Control Protocol, and it’s typically one of the major kinds of connections that CDN’s use.
- Backbones – Backbones are basically the main lines of connections between all the computers in a content delivery network.
- P2P – P2P stands for peer to peer, or sharing from one computer user to another. It’s a newer form of CDN which is often low cost.
- ASP – This stands for Application Service Provider. These are the companies that create the traditional form of content delivery networks, such as Amazon, CDNetworks, and Cotendo.
What To Look For In A CDN
If you want to invest in a CDN, you should consider several different important aspects. After all, it’s your money that you will be spending. Here are the major factors that will determine whether a content delivery service.
- Multiple backbones will mean more bandwidth, and more speed.
- Getting a CDN from a company that has excellent customer service is a good way to make sure that any problems will get solved quickly.
- If you are going to be using P2P, make sure that you ask about the network’s security.
The Advantages Of Having A Content Delivery Network
Content delivery networks are excellent for speed, but the fact is that they are best known for giving site owners more control over the network load and delivery. If you don’t want to give too much of your network load to one packet, it’s possible to arrange that with a CDN.
Information about what your site’s users enjoy is also a very nice perk of having a content delivery network. With a CDN, it’s easy to optimize capacity per user, show which data packets are popular, and also have 100% availability for your data. All of the records which deal with downloading statistics are usually available with CDN’s.
The Disadvantages Of Having A Content Delivery Network
It should be noted that having a content delivery network tends to mean that you will have to pay extra money on top of your current hosting fees in order to keep it working. It can get pretty pricey without having too much data being exchanged.
However, there are exceptions to this rule as well. There are multiple content delivery networks that offer their services for free. For those who need a little bit of a boost when it comes to their site’s loading speed, this is a godsend. Still, it might be best to pay a little bit of extra money in order to get all the benefits of a fully professional content delivery network instead.