You may not need to have a CDN for your personal blog or your neighborhood store website, but you should know what they are, what advantages they have, or why they are so important.
What is?
CDN stands for Content Delivery Network and it is a group or set of connected servers that are also called distribution networks or “content delivery networks”. They are servers connected in different locations that offer better traffic management by replicating the web even if your server is physically far away. They bridge the distance to the main server of a web thanks to its nodes or its network of servers in hundreds of countries and cities.
They are geographically distributed in a network that allows content to reach any part of the world quickly and safely. They are “behind” each of the pages you visit every day, from websites like Twitch to others such as media. Lighten the traffic load, reduce load times and improve performance as well as security against attacks.
Importance of a CDN
The main mission is that a website you visit loads quickly even if they are physically located on the other side of the world. For this, as we say, what do is replicate the content all or part of the content through this set of geographically connected and distributed servers. Thanks to this network, you access the one closest to you, accessing that replica of the page that you have on your closest server and thus reducing the loading time.
If many people access the same page at the same time (to follow a direct of the Champions League final in a sports medium or to watch a popular and successful Twitch broadcast) the mission of this CDN is that the page is blocked in another city, thanks to the distribution network. We navigate faster thanks to them.
Functioning
A CDN stores part of the information that users request and has “copies” of that web page or that content that are geographically distributed in several different points of the planet (the points will depend on the CDN itself). connecting is receiving the copy that we have physically closer.
And what difference is there with a CDN and a hosting? The hosting or accommodation is necessary on any web page since, as its name indicates, they “host” that page. What the CDN does is replicate what is in it to physically bring it closer to all geographical points and achieve the improvements explained above: better manage traffic, shorten loading times.
Most popular and relevant
When choosing one or the other, you have to look at the centers it has around the world or the different servers taking into account our public, for example. Most have a cost that is usually in subscription format with annual or monthly payment and large websites and media around the world have a CDN.
Cloudfare is one of the most popular content delivery networks in the world. Not only does it reduce loading times but it boasts of “protecting your presence on the Internet”. It has an easy-to-use free plan with some features included such as automated SSL certificates or mitigation of unmetered use of DDos attacks. But if you want something much more complete, it also offers Pro, Business or Enterprise plans priced at $ 20 a month, $ 200 or a personalized price depending on each company or its needs.
Cloudfare has a network in over a hundred different countries, in over 200 cities around the world. In Spain it has headquarters in Barcelona and Madrid and there is also one in Lisbon on the Iberian Peninsula. Each of them has hundreds of servers available that make the content accessible quickly.
Fastly is one of the CDN providers and stands out for its multiple configuration options. The company boasts of having more than 800,000 million requests per year and more than 95% satisfaction rating. Fastly has “POP” (or “Points of Presence”) all over the world. Among them, in Madrid.
As the previous, Fastly It has several payment plans although with a free period where you can test its uses or its advantages and with a pay-as-you-go system. If not, three different plans: Essential, Professional or Enterprise. The Essential plan It is intended for small companies or larger models.
Fastly is the one used by thousands of websites that you visit every day and we were able to verify it with an error in the service in June 2021. An error in the CDN that caused a large part of the Internet to go down, with relevant websites worldwide. Pages such as Twitch, Hulu, The New York Times, The Guardian CNN, HBO Max, Imgur, Shopify, Fubo TV work with this CDN and a failure in it caused the global crash
Akamai is another of the three great CDNs worldwide with more than 1,400 networks in 135 countries and with more than 300 Tbps capacity, as explained on their website. It has several software systems with tools and options for online video, for Cloud Comuting network or to manage accounts and performance. It mainly highlights three software solutions to differentiate itself from the others: Aure Edge eXchange, Aura Control System, and Akamai Federation.
You have a free option with a 30-day trial if you register on the website with your full name, company email and company name. You don’t need a payment method to try it for a month. Once the trial is over, you can choose which plan or subscription you can hire. The difference with the previous ones is that there is no closed plan or several subscription options whose prices we can consult on the website, but it requires talking with the commercial service so that they give you a budget.