{"id":181,"date":"2015-03-25T21:05:54","date_gmt":"2015-03-25T21:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ahosting.net\/blog\/?p=181"},"modified":"2015-03-25T21:05:54","modified_gmt":"2015-03-25T21:05:54","slug":"what-is-a-content-delivery-network-exactly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ahosting.net\/blog\/what-is-a-content-delivery-network-exactly\/","title":{"rendered":"What IS A Content Delivery Network, Exactly?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve heard on at least one occasion that content delivery networks are awesome. They significantly improve the speed at which your website can deliver content. Not only does that make for a better user experience, there\u2019s also mounting evidence that faster-loading pages tend to rank higher than those that load slowly (though not, perhaps, for the reasons that you might think<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Sounds like a pretty good deal across the board, no?<\/p>\n

It certainly does. There\u2019s just one problem, though. While the above explanation certainly does make a compelling case as to why <\/b>you should use a content delivery network, it doesn\u2019t really offer much in terms of explaining how a CDN actually works<\/b>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what we\u2019re here to talk about today. How does a content delivery network function? More importantly, how can you tell when you should use one for your own site?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you\u2019re running a website from a server in New York City. The browser of every single person who connects to your website first needs to make a DNS request to discover the website\u2019s IP address. Once it has that it can initiate a connection to your site. Then the data needs to be sent and received.<\/p>\n

That last part is where lag generally tends to occur. In order to load each \u2018piece\u2019 of data on your site, the host and the client need to communicate. Even a slight delay in the communication could significantly increase load times.<\/p>\n

For anyone in the tri-state area, this is pretty much a non-issue. They should be able to request, receive, and load data from the website with relative speed. But what about visitors based out of other locations?<\/p>\n

What about people from Austin? Or Los Angeles? Or Canada?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where content delivery networks come in – they essentially function as digital middlemen for your website, delivering content to visitors geographically removed from your location. They do this through the use of edge servers – proxy caches that contain a copy of your website. When an edge server receives a request from a browser, it goes through the following process:<\/p>\n