CDN indicates ‘Content Delivery Network‘ represents to a geographically distributed group of servers which join hands to deliver fast internet content. It permits a quick transmission required for loading internet content such as JavaScript files, HTML pages, images and videos.
These days, it is very popular as the majority of web traffic is handled through CDN’s and the major traffic carrying sites are Facebook, Amazon and a couple of other channels. It is a critical layer in the internet processing cycle. As the owner of e-commerce websites and media companies pay some amount to CDN operators to further forward their content to users. And in return of it, CDN’s pay network operators to host the servers in their data centers.
Is there any correlation between content delivery network and web hosting?
The CDN can’t take place of web hosting and even doesn’t host content; it just helps the cache content to enhance the website performance. Many websites that are going through a hard time to get higher performance with traditional hosting services, they can go with CDNs.
Let’s have a look at the difference between CDN and web hosting:
1. Web hosting mainly works to host a website on a server and give access to use it over the internet. Whereas CDN works to speed up the performance of a website as well as perform expeditious delivery of content from owner to user.
2. The great difference in both hosting services is web hosting refers to a single server and on the other note, the content delivery network represents to a worldwide network of edge servers (come from origin server) which indicate the content is distributed from multi-host surroundings.
3. The web hosting delivers 100% content to an individual and if a user is across the world, then they have to wait a little bit for data to be transmitted from the server location. A CDN is quite fast in a content delivery service. It serves the data across the globe effectively. This means the fastest route it follows to deliver the assets to a user as quickly as possible.
These above differences clearly define you how traditional web hosting differentiate their existence from a content delivery network. Deeply read this because it’s good if you have any confusion between traditional or CDN hosting services.
Benefits of using content delivery network:
The advantages of using CDN depend upon the internet property you want for your work but its primary benefits are as follows:
1. Minimizing bandwidth costs – Consumption of high bandwidth for web hosting has expended the expense of a website. But here we have another option to turn which is CDN because it has the capability to reduce the total content server that has provided via caching and other optimizations. Therefore, the bandwidth cost has been decreased.
2. Enhancing website load times – For experiencing faster and far better loading time, this server is really a good choice. As visitors are more interested to click on faster loading website and if your site has a slow loading problem then you will lose your visitors. In this situation, CDN can minimize the bounce rates and improve the loading speed so that people will stay at your site for a maximum time period. In short, you can say fast loading speed means more people are inclined towards your site and spend longer time and as a result, they’ll show interest in your services.
3. Improving content availability and redundancy – Heavy traffic to the website may interrupt the normal functionality of your site and might user lose connection in between the work. With distributed nature, content delivery network comes forward to handle the large amounts of traffic and stand by the side of hardware failure too.
4. Increasing website security – Security is one essential element that is a basic demand of all websites whether you’re running a small or large business. CDN increases web security by offering DDoS mitigation and a few more optimizations.
CDN vs Web Hosting without CDN
The above picture indicates the working pattern of CDN and web hosting without CDN. As you can see KeyCDN Edge servers are offering fastest connection to different users whereas in web hosting without CDN, origin server distributed the connection to all users as it enhances the slow loading program when more and more users connected to a single server.
How does a CDN work?
CDN is a network that linked different servers with an aim to deliver the content to users in a quick, systematic, secure and cheaper way. A single server couldn’t entertain all the users so with the goal to improve the speed and connectivity of the internet connection or you can say improve the content delivery speed, CDN will construct servers at different exchange points and between variable networks. The exchange points are primary locations where providers are connected in order to offer access to each other when high traffic is originated at various networks. With this action, the CDN cost will be reduced and improved speed or connectivity.
How CDN helps to keep the website alive (Online) all the time?
Today, where the whole world is dependent upon the internet connection, uptime is another critical situation for the websites. Hardware failure or other minor errors will badly influence the site. This will increase downtime problem and users won’t be able to access your website on the internet. Here we list out several ways to minimize the downtime.
• If one or more CDN servers are stopped working due to hardware failure, it distributes the traffic to different servers but never let the websites down. It is a smart move to cope up with heavy traffic around the world.
• In the event or official meetings, if entire data goes through some serious technical errors, the CDN will transfer the entire traffic to another resource (most nearby data center). It makes sure no user will fall in a downtime problem where they have to find the actual access to the website.
If your website is realistic to deal with images then CDN is a good option to have. Image loading is a general problem every individual has to face in their work and it impacts the reputation of your business too. The CDN service is perfect to serve your image faster but all compress or resize it in a quick way. So, as much as CDN servers located across the globe, more quick response you’ll get.
Here is a list of 5 best Image CDN web hosting provider for 2019:
The Amazon CloudFront CDN is the bigger brand to distribute the content on different websites. It has posted 61 servers around the world and high capability to deliver the images faster.
Delivering the image faster using Amazon CloudFront CDN:
Many of you might go through a situation where you want to modify the dimensions of the images, want to apply the new layout design and require a couple of other features and with just a few seconds it can be possible and will give you a better solution without using much bandwidth. Its functionality work in few steps such as:
• CloudFront Viewer Request – The CloudFront receives a request from the user to put some modification in an image.
• CloudFront Origin Request – The action is started when a request is sent to the origin and this function doesn’t execute if an object is in the edge cache.
• CloudFront Origin Response – At this stage, an action is executed when a CloudFront has received a response from the origin and before it caches the object in the response.
• CloudFront Viewer Response – Its the last stage and action is pursued before sending the response to the viewer. Whether the object is in the edge cache or not, the function keeps executing.
This function is available in different continents such as America, Europe, Asia, and Africa and at the same time, it’s feasible in countries like The United States, Singapore, Australia, India, Germany, South America, UK, etc.
You can also try free Amazon SSL certificate connection to serve your images as it enhances web security.
2. KeyCDN
To boost up the images of websites, KeyCDN is good to use CDN service. As you may aware of a fact that images occupy the maximum size of a file, this is the reason KeyCDN contains Optimus image optimization. This special CDN removes the extra size of an image without losing any visible pixel of an image. It is also a reliable factor from an SEO point of view, as it puts the canonical tag on the image Meta which makes the search engine work easy to explore the URL of an original image.
Image optimization is done in various ways:
- Smart image compression using Optimus
- Get scaled images for different sizes of your display
- Upload care for 3rd party image services
With this feature, your images will respond faster and in this way, you don’t have to pay any extra cost. These servers are placed in cities like Hong Kong, Sydney, London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Frankfurt, etc to serve faster images which hadn’t done before.
Advantages:
- Non-technical person can easily use it
- Get free services like DDoS Protection, TLS Certificate, and HTTP/2
- Send request at free of cost
3. MetaCDN
They join the CDN’s of Amazon CloudFront, fastly and Verizon’s EdgeCast into one service. When any visitor accesses your site, MetaCDN holds three networks and they have more than 120 locations to finalize from – a better option than anyone else. This shows, there’s a great scope for the visitor to find out a server near them.
This concept enhances the performance of different areas of network connection. Edgecast acquires high value in North America but Fastly is superior in the UK. It gives the best network all across the globe to its users.
It is a worldwide popular CDN network and won’t make you pay. Get to know how it works. Like other networks, it doesn’t give you custom CNAME for your domain. So, it works as an edge Cache network for your website. In one flow, it copies the whole content of your website and presents that from the closet location of your visitor.
Under the paid plans, you’ll get mirage and polish image optimization which automatically resize and compress the images for faster page load service.
Advantages:
- Free SSL certificate service
- Free as well as paid plans are available
- For highest content delivery 165 data centers are deployed
5. CDN77
It is one of the networks which hold robust content delivery features such as HTTP/2 Server Push, Instant SSL, and Brotli compression. There are two plans work in it either monthly pay a bill or pay as per your plan. On a regular basis check data and bandwidth and pay the cost in real time.
The compression of the image process depends on Google’s Brotli algorithm and as compared to the Gzip compression system it’s better. It will cost you a very low price.
Advantages:
- Work effectively with WordPress
- Get free SSL certificate and 50 GB cloud storage
Go with the best CDN to host your images. These are the best providers in 2019 and stay connected you’ll get powerful host providers in coming years.
About the Author
Jerry Peres owns Easy.gr agency and with his excellent skills, he’s leading web hosting service in Greece. They are offering you the best web hosting packages – mini to multipack 30 options to choose the most required. Quick and safe action is implemented to upload your website online.
