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What the heck is a CDN?

A content delivery network (CDN) refers to a geographically distributed group of servers which work together to provide fast delivery of Internet content.

By using geographically located servers, content is served with less network hops allowing for users to get content faster. CDN providers also offer caching, proxying and many other complex processing to speed up the serving of content.

CDN diagram

Benefits include

  • Speed! Content is just loaded/served faster
  • Reduced bandwidth costs through caching content and optimization
  • Increased availability through distributing content geographically
  • Increased security and uptime through protection against DDoS attacks