What is CDN and What is its Use?
Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2024 7:44 am
Site speed is one of the most important ranking factors that Google takes into account when evaluating websites . It is a well-known fact in today's digital marketing world that internet users are extremely impatient and abandon slow-loading sites immediately. For this reason, all website owners today want to implement all technical developments that will increase site speed performance in the most complete way. Using CDN is also one of the most important technical developments made to increase site speed.
What is CDN?
CDN is formed from the initials of the words “Content Delivery Network” . It is translated into Turkish as “Content Distribution Network” . CDN is a cluster of servers distributed geographically in different locations that work together to ensure the fastest delivery of content belonging to a website. In short, CDN is a global server community. Although CDN is a geographically distributed system, it consists of servers working together. Its most basic purpose is to deliver internet content to users quickly. The second most important purpose of CDN is to protect websites against malicious attacks such as DDOS.
How Does CDN Work?
In the Content Delivery Network system, or CDN, the data belonging to a website is hosted not only on the main server but also on all local servers in the CDN network. When a user from anywhere in the world wants to visit the website, all static data belonging to the website (JS, CSS, Images…) is not served from the main server, but from the server closest to that user. By loading the data from the closest server, the website can be loaded quickly from anywhere in the world.
So how does the system detect the closest server?
This system determines the closest CDN server to the user visiting the website by looking at the DNS address.
“In summary, CDN works on the principle of serving website data from the closest point to the end user.”
CDN pulls all the data it owns (belonging to the website) from the origin server of that website. CDN caches the data it pulls and when an internet user requests that data, it presents the cached data to the internet user. This caching period can be adjusted as desired and when the caching period is over, fresh data is pulled with a new request made to the origin server.
What is CDN Used For?
Increases Site Speed
The number one reason why CDN is preferred is that it contributes job seekers database to the increase in speed. CDN provides this by sending files from the closest location to the users. With the data being sent from the closest location, there will be positive increases in download speed and latency.
To proceed with the example, you wanted to access a website from Kastamonu, Turkey, whose server is located in Canada. Considering the distance between Kastamonu and Canada, the data exchange between the server and the client will take some time. However, if the website used a CDN hosting a server in Istanbul, the user who wanted to access the site from Kastamonu would receive the data from Istanbul.
Today, hosting platforms have very powerful and special server solutions such as VPS Servers. These solutions offer features such as very high CPU, RAM and Disk space. Website owners with these types of servers may think that they do not need a CDN. However, since the point where CDN makes a difference is to provide data from the closest location, CDN is a feature that should be preferred.
Increases Security
In order to use the CDN service, you must have your DNS on the CDN service. This means that the CDN will provide protection against the DDOS attacks we will encounter from now on. Almost all good CDN services have superior security technologies against DDOS attacks. In addition, CDN services regularly make improvements and developments in their security certificates.
Reduces the Load on the Main Server
Using CDN can also save you from many additional costs. One of these costs is bandwidth. As a result of the heavy traffic to our website, the bandwidth of our main server may not be able to handle this traffic and a greater bandwidth may be needed here. Using CDN also prevents such problems.
Provides Management of Traffic Density
E-commerce sites run big campaigns on special days like Black Friday, and on these special days, website traffic increases many times over the normal figures. During such periodic traffic increases, you can have the opportunity to distribute incoming traffic to different servers with CDN. This traffic distribution process is called Load Balancing. With Load Balancing, you can eliminate all kinds of crashes, slowdowns and server overload risks.
This chart from CloudFlare shows how their CDN service protects your website.
What Types of Files Are Used to Host CDN?
CDN is generally used by very large e-commerce sites and news sites to host images and videos. However, CDN is not only for hosting images, it is an external server where you can host all your static documents such as JS, CSS, PDF, Text, Media Files, Font Files, Documents, Applications.
Which Sites Should Use CDN?
Content delivery networks can be preferred by all websites, big or small. However, they are generally preferred by sites with a lot of content, high global traffic and large volumes.
Of course, any site that uses a CDN will benefit from using one. However, a website that is limited to a small geographic area and receives little traffic will not see much of a difference when measuring the benefits of a CDN versus not using one.
CDN service is essential for websites that serve purposes such as e-commerce, news, games, and videos. In addition, sites that require the highest level of security, such as financial institutions and government agencies, also benefit from the security benefits of CDN.
3 Free CDN Services You Can Choose From
CDN service fees vary depending on the amount of traffic your website receives, the industry you serve, and the type of files you want to host.
In this blog post, we wanted to present you 3 service providers that offer free CDN services for small and large-scale websites that want to test CDN.
What is CDN?
CDN is formed from the initials of the words “Content Delivery Network” . It is translated into Turkish as “Content Distribution Network” . CDN is a cluster of servers distributed geographically in different locations that work together to ensure the fastest delivery of content belonging to a website. In short, CDN is a global server community. Although CDN is a geographically distributed system, it consists of servers working together. Its most basic purpose is to deliver internet content to users quickly. The second most important purpose of CDN is to protect websites against malicious attacks such as DDOS.
How Does CDN Work?
In the Content Delivery Network system, or CDN, the data belonging to a website is hosted not only on the main server but also on all local servers in the CDN network. When a user from anywhere in the world wants to visit the website, all static data belonging to the website (JS, CSS, Images…) is not served from the main server, but from the server closest to that user. By loading the data from the closest server, the website can be loaded quickly from anywhere in the world.
So how does the system detect the closest server?
This system determines the closest CDN server to the user visiting the website by looking at the DNS address.
“In summary, CDN works on the principle of serving website data from the closest point to the end user.”
CDN pulls all the data it owns (belonging to the website) from the origin server of that website. CDN caches the data it pulls and when an internet user requests that data, it presents the cached data to the internet user. This caching period can be adjusted as desired and when the caching period is over, fresh data is pulled with a new request made to the origin server.
What is CDN Used For?
Increases Site Speed
The number one reason why CDN is preferred is that it contributes job seekers database to the increase in speed. CDN provides this by sending files from the closest location to the users. With the data being sent from the closest location, there will be positive increases in download speed and latency.
To proceed with the example, you wanted to access a website from Kastamonu, Turkey, whose server is located in Canada. Considering the distance between Kastamonu and Canada, the data exchange between the server and the client will take some time. However, if the website used a CDN hosting a server in Istanbul, the user who wanted to access the site from Kastamonu would receive the data from Istanbul.
Today, hosting platforms have very powerful and special server solutions such as VPS Servers. These solutions offer features such as very high CPU, RAM and Disk space. Website owners with these types of servers may think that they do not need a CDN. However, since the point where CDN makes a difference is to provide data from the closest location, CDN is a feature that should be preferred.
Increases Security
In order to use the CDN service, you must have your DNS on the CDN service. This means that the CDN will provide protection against the DDOS attacks we will encounter from now on. Almost all good CDN services have superior security technologies against DDOS attacks. In addition, CDN services regularly make improvements and developments in their security certificates.
Reduces the Load on the Main Server
Using CDN can also save you from many additional costs. One of these costs is bandwidth. As a result of the heavy traffic to our website, the bandwidth of our main server may not be able to handle this traffic and a greater bandwidth may be needed here. Using CDN also prevents such problems.
Provides Management of Traffic Density
E-commerce sites run big campaigns on special days like Black Friday, and on these special days, website traffic increases many times over the normal figures. During such periodic traffic increases, you can have the opportunity to distribute incoming traffic to different servers with CDN. This traffic distribution process is called Load Balancing. With Load Balancing, you can eliminate all kinds of crashes, slowdowns and server overload risks.
This chart from CloudFlare shows how their CDN service protects your website.
What Types of Files Are Used to Host CDN?
CDN is generally used by very large e-commerce sites and news sites to host images and videos. However, CDN is not only for hosting images, it is an external server where you can host all your static documents such as JS, CSS, PDF, Text, Media Files, Font Files, Documents, Applications.
Which Sites Should Use CDN?
Content delivery networks can be preferred by all websites, big or small. However, they are generally preferred by sites with a lot of content, high global traffic and large volumes.
Of course, any site that uses a CDN will benefit from using one. However, a website that is limited to a small geographic area and receives little traffic will not see much of a difference when measuring the benefits of a CDN versus not using one.
CDN service is essential for websites that serve purposes such as e-commerce, news, games, and videos. In addition, sites that require the highest level of security, such as financial institutions and government agencies, also benefit from the security benefits of CDN.
3 Free CDN Services You Can Choose From
CDN service fees vary depending on the amount of traffic your website receives, the industry you serve, and the type of files you want to host.
In this blog post, we wanted to present you 3 service providers that offer free CDN services for small and large-scale websites that want to test CDN.