Cloud Delivery Networks

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

A CDN operates an Origin Server, which is the 'main' server that handles requests. Multiple CDN edge servers then sit in front of this at the [[20221107042816-network-edge]] that aim to reduce the load on the Origin Server. If you can store (i.e. cache) closer to the request, you can increase performance for that request.

![[CDN.png]]

The main benefits are:

• Reducing load times. Users can connect to the geographically closest CDN server, which is often much closer than the origin server. This also reduces the latency.
• Reducing bandwidth costs. CDNs cache content, meaning the hosting cost for the origin server is less
• Content availability and redundancy. More servers, less problems. The distributed nature handles more traffic and helps when a single server goes down.
• Website security. Similar to redundancy, having more servers stops against things like DDOS attacks.

[[20221107042513-edge-computing]]

[[architecture]] [[networking]] [[infrastructure]]