A CDN, content delivery network, refers to a geographically distributed group of servers that work together to provide fast Internet content delivery.
CDN allows for the quick transfer of assets needed for loading Internet content, including HTML pages, stylesheets, images, and video streamings. The popularity of CDN services continues to grow, and today, most web traffic is served through CDNs, including traffic from major sites like Facebook and Amazon.
A properly configured CDN may also help protect websites against some common malicious attacks. The most common one is known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks.
Is a CDN the same as a web host?
While a CDN does not host content and can’t replace the need for proper web hosting, it does help cache content at the network edge. In other words, it helps to improve website performance. A lot of websites struggle to have their performance needs to be met by traditional hosting services, so they will find the solution, which is opting for CDNs.
By utilizing caching to reduce hosting bandwidth, prevent interruptions in service, and improve security, CDNs are a popular choice to relieve some of the major pain points with traditional web hosting.
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