Who Should use a CDN?
Anyone who does business online and either wants or needs faster, more efficient content delivery to their consumers, or needs to improve their SEO, is a candidate for a content delivery network (CDN). Even smaller businesses or websites who don’t see a tremendous amount of web traffic can greatly benefit from using a CDN.
What is a CDN?
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers that deliver web content and pages to users based on their geographic locations to improve performance and reduce latency. It caches and stores your website's essential files, such as HTML pages, JavaScript files, CSS files, images, and videos, on edge servers, resulting in shorter load times.
How Does a CDN Work?
A CDN works by distributing your website's content across a global network of edge servers to route users to the closest edge server for faster load times.
Here’s a breakdown of how it operates:
Content Distribution: A CDN stores copies of your website files on edge servers around the world, helping speed up content delivery and minimizing load delays.
Edge Servers: Your business' content is cached on these strategically positioned servers. Customers accessing your site are routed to the edge server with the lowest latency, typically the server that is physically closest to them.
Load Balancing: CDNs employ sophisticated algorithms to monitor and load balance traffic across the edge server network. More optimal routing decisions and greater resilience mean no single server has to carry too high a load, maintaining optimal performance even as website usage rises.
Data Retrieval: When an end user requests access to your site, the nearest edge server delivers it directly to them without having to retrieve it from your origin server.
Content Purging and Updating: CDNs also constantly purge, or remove and update, content. This ensures that users always receive the most up-to-date content without companies having to worry about serving outdated information.
What are the benefits of using a CDN?
CDN’s have become an essential tool to enhance the performance of websites and applications and guarantee the best user experiences. Key benefits of using a CDN include:
Reduced latency: An effective CDN minimizes the delay between a data request and the delivery by caching and storing your website's content on servers close to your customers, which means less waiting time.
Enhanced performance: With content being served from local edge servers, your customers will spend less time waiting for pages and assets to load, including those with high-bandwidth, media-rich content, leading to higher satisfaction levels thanks to the smoother user experience.
Improved security: The best CDNs provide additional layers of security, for example by:
Safeguarding against DDoS attacks by filtering traffic to identify malicious requests
Large, high-bandwidth, globally distributed CDNs are able to absorb excess traffic and prevent it from hitting your origin server.
Safeguarding data with Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates that ensure a high standard of authentication and encryption.
Offering Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) to analyze and channel every HTTP request, blocking application layer (Layer 7) threats, only allowing secure traffic through.
CDNs can use detection technology to quickly identify and neutralize bots that perform automated tasks and can be used for malicious attacks.
Reduced costs: By caching content, a CDN lowers the volume of data that needs to be transmitted to and from your origin servers. This results in lower infrastructure expenses for your business, as the same content reaches more end users but requires fewer resources. CDNs can also help reduce bandwidth costs by rerouting traffic from the origin server to the CDN's servers.
Increased scalability: During busy periods, such as Black Friday sales or new product launches, a CDN easily scales to handle unusually large traffic surges to your site. This on-demand scalability allows companies to normalize their server spend and avoid paying for wasted storage during off-peak times.
Boosted visibility: Site speed is a significant factor considered by search engines. By improving load times through caching and content delivery, a CDN positively influences how search engines view your site. With better visibility, you can gain more organic traffic and exposure.
Improved availability: CDNs allow websites and apps to be "always on", avoiding error messages frustrating your end users. If an origin server goes down, the CDN can continue serving whatever content was last in cache to users from geographically and strategically distributed points of presence (POPs).
So who needs a CDN?
Any website wanting to improve SEO and conversions
Even smaller websites benefit from a CDN because faster websites:
Rank higher on Google due to improved Core Web Vitals.
Lower bounce rates by providing a smooth user experience.
Build trust with secure, fast-loading pages.
E-Commerce Websites
If you sell anything online, every second of load time on your website matters. Studies continually show that even seconds of delayed load time can result in potential customers leaving your site. A CDN:
Reduces page load times for global shoppers.
Ensures reliability during traffic spikes, like sales or holiday seasons.
Improves conversions by delivering a seamless shopping experience.
Media and Streaming Platforms
Video-on-demand services, music platforms, and gaming networks rely on high-speed content delivery. A CDN:
Minimizes buffering and lag.
Supports adaptive streaming for different devices and bandwidths.
Scales effortlessly to handle millions of concurrent users.
Global Businesses and Brands
For companies targeting audiences across continents, a CDN:
Reduces latency by delivering content from local edge servers.
Helps meet regional compliance requirements (like GDPR) with localized delivery.
Improves SEO by boosting site speed, a Google ranking factor.
High-Traffic Blogs and News Outlets
Content-heavy sites can slow down quickly without optimization. A CDN:
Speeds up delivery of text, images, and ads.
Handles sudden traffic surges during viral events.
Reduces server strain to avoid crashes.
Web Applications and SaaS Platforms
For businesses providing online tools or services:
A CDN improves user experience with fast-loading assets.
Protects apps from DDoS attacks and malicious traffic.
Ensures uptime during peak usage periods.
Why Fastly Is Your Best Choice for a CDN Solution
Traditional hosting alone cannot meet the modern web browser's expectations. Choosing the right Content Delivery Network (CDN) can therefore be the difference between you gaining or losing a customer.
While every CDN claims to solve your speed and reliability concerns, the right solution must offer a comprehensive set of features to deliver on this promise. Fastly's CDN solution stands out for its versatile capabilities and impressive track record. Fastly has the robust infrastructure to ensure your sites, apps, and APIs run at maximum speed with built-in security and scalability.
Fastly’s key benefits include:
Global Edge Network: With 291 Tbps of global edge capacity, Fastly’s CDN ensures swift and reliable content delivery, minimizing delays and optimizing user load times worldwide.
Efficient Caching: Fastly offers, on average, 150ms cache invalidation globally, allowing for speedy updates and ensuring end users receive the most current content without delay.
Quick Deployment and High Accuracy: Security solutions like WAF can be deployed in minutes and offer 90% effectiveness in blocking malicious traffic with minimal false positives.
Instant Log Data: Fastly delivers 100% of log data in real-time, allowing you to gain immediate insights for monitoring and troubleshooting.
Elastic Scaling: Fastly also supports automatic scaling without capacity constraints, making it ideal for businesses enjoying rapid growth or need to deal with variable traffic patterns.
Vendor Consolidation: Fastly’s unified platform consolidates multiple services (like CDN, security, and compute), offering cost savings and simpler admin by reducing the need for multiple vendors.
High Customer Satisfaction: Fastly consistently achieves high customer satisfaction scores (98% CSAT) and offers lightning-fast response times (10 minutes for enterprise response) with effective issue resolution.
To learn more about how Fastly's CDN can help your business thrive, sign up for a free trial today.
To learn more about how Fastly's CDN can help your business thrive, sign up for a free trial today.
