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WELCOME TO CDNREVIEWS.COM
As the internet has evolved, so has the content that it serves. The Internet is no longer a textual database of information, but its now comprised of rich content such as software, documents, images, video, and large media files. This, in addition to a large increase in Internet users, has created the need for larger and more robust networks, such as CDN’s.
With respect to hosting content, there are really two options you are faced with. You can either host your own content through a hosting company of your choice, or you can use a Content Delivery Network. There are benefits and limitations to both.
The philosophy behind Content Delivery Networks is aimed at increasing the overall performance for your end-users.
Instead of hosting your own content in just 1 or a few locations, CDN’s have thousands of servers around the world
that replicate your content. So if I’m trying to reach your website from Asia, I will be routed to the CDN servers
in Asia that are hosting your content. If I’m in California, I will be routed to the CDN servers in California, and
same way around the world. However, if I decide to host my own content, it will probably only reside in a few locations at most. As you can see, a lot can go wrong if I’m coming from Asia and being routed to New York, for example. If I do business on a global scale, it gets very expensive to put up a lot of datacenter locations, so many times the CDN approach is best.
CDN providers today have become very commoditized. Most of these providers are providing nearly the same services with little variances. Some only provide the delivery of the content, and some will actually store the content for you as well. Some of the common differences between providers include their footprint of servers, the types and variations of content they serve, and the management/control capabilities they provide you. If you’ve done any research yet, you are probably a bit confused as to what these companies are actually offering. You’ve probably seen the words site acceleration, site optimizer, etc…This is really the same type of thing with a marketing spin. It is highly recommended that you analyze the speed of various networks before choosing which one you go with. In the next month or so, this website will have a page solely dedicated on showing the speeds of each of these networks. The speed that your website loads is becoming more and more critical, not only for user experience, but also because Google is now factoring that into your search engine rank.