: CDN - Content Delivery Networks. How do they work and why would I want to use one? What exactly is a Content Delivery Network (CDN), how does it work, and why would I want to use one for

@Ogunnowo487

When someone open your site, content are arranged in a queue. Untill or unless 1st component is delievered other component cant be. So the overall loading speed of your site is increased.
If you use some CDN then requests can be processed parrelaly. So the overall speed increases.


You can use your own site as CDN from
yourself by creating subdomain.


Better to use google or wordpress for static contents. Their DNS resolving time is very less

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@Caterina187

Microsoft is also running Windows Azure CDN and they recently released their pricing structure for it as:

“The following three billing meters and rates will apply for the CDN:

•[CO].15 per GB for data transfers from European and North American locations
•[CO].20 per GB for data transfers from other locations
•[CO].01 per 10,000 transactions”

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@Welton855

Definition

Wikipedia says it well:


A content delivery network or content
distribution network (CDN) is a system
of computers containing copies of
data, placed at various points in a
network so as to maximize bandwidth
for access to the data from clients
throughout the network. A client
accesses a copy of the data near to
the client, as opposed to all clients
accessing the same central server, so
as to avoid bottleneck near that
server.

Content types include web
objects, downloadable objects (media
files, software, documents),
applications, real time media streams,
and other components of internet
delivery (DNS, routes, and database
queries)


Benefits


Uptime
Download speed
File mirroring
Faster page download perception


Common CDNs


Amazon CloudFront (in tandem with Amazon S3) is a CDN that I use and love.
Cloud Files by Rackspace
Longer list of free and paid CDNs at Wikipedia

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@Pope3001725

Content Delivery Networks host copies of your content and serve it to your visitors from a server that's close to them. For example, if your images are served through a CDN, a visitor to your site transparently downloads the images from the CDN's server instead of yours.

The two biggest reasons for using a CDN are reducing traffic/bandwidth on your server, and increasing delivery speed. A CDN acts as a cache: it downloads your content from your server once, and then delivers it to all visitors from its own servers instead of yours. A CDN will also have a large number of servers located around the globe, so they will be able to serve content to most visitors from a closer location than you could, and thus get it there faster.

The two biggest CDNs I'm aware of are Akamai and Limelight.

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