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Global Content Delivery Network

Many hosting providers offer the option to use a Content Delivery Network (or CDN), as does Get Interactive. A CDN can be a valuable addition to your website or application. On this page, we'll tell you what a CDN exactly entails, how they work, and why they add value.

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CDN

What is a Content Delivery Network?

A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a group of internationally distributed servers that are connected to each other. A CDN ensures that your website is faster to reach and use internationally, by having users retrieve data from the nearest server.

For example, it's much faster for a user in Japan to load your website from a server in Japan, instead of a server in the Netherlands. A CDN synchronizes your website across the different servers, allowing users to quickly load your website from the fastest server without delay.

Not only the website pages, but also content such as videos, images, and documents are automatically synchronized worldwide by the CDN. The main goal of a CDN is therefore to reduce the time needed to send the content and media of a website to international users.

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Data

How does a CDN work?

CDN providers store your website's data in the cache of their own network or third-party data centers. When a user requests the content of a website and this content is stored in a CDN's cache, the request will be redirected to the server closest to the user. This process is invisible to the user.

Many international organizations already use CDNs to cache their website content, and we're seeing a big increase in demand for CDN services now that websites increasingly offer streaming video, e-commerce, and cloud applications, for which fast and secure data delivery is essential. The CDN architecture is designed to reduce network latency caused by transporting data over long distances and across different networks.

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Security

Extra security via a CDN

Because a CDN is, so to speak, at the "edge of a network", it has the ability to also directly add to security. Think of Firewalls, countering bots, and DDoS protection.

In a DDoS attack, a large number of computers, often from different locations around the world, connect to one server. However, this server can only process a limited number of requests at a time. Similar to a traffic jam on the highway, the huge amount of traffic causes the server to be much slower than normal, or even unusable for the user. A CDN can provide extra protection against this, and its distributed network ensures that during an attack, some visitors can still use the website. Want to know more about DDoS? Then definitely read our blog about this topic.

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Benefits

A CDN for your website

The added value of a CDN should be clear by now: delivering content through a network of servers in a secure and efficient way. Besides websites, many other services also use CDN, think of mobile applications, streaming, gaming, downloads, Social Media, and search engines.

How does a CDN help concretely:

  • Efficiency: A CDN improves the loading time of web pages. This can have a positive effect on your Page Speed ranking in Google, and thus your SEO position.
  • Ease of use: Users will find a slow-loading website frustrating or even leave, which you can prevent with a CDN.
  • Security: CDNs improve security with services such as Firewalls and protection against DDoS attacks.
  • Availability: CDNs can handle more traffic and better avoid network failures. Your website is therefore more stable online.
  • Savings: CDNs reduce the bandwidth consumption of your website or service, which can save on hosting costs.

Below are also some concrete examples of what CDNs are used for:

  • Webshop: keeping content available during peak sales season, when many visitors use the webshop.
  • Bank: securely sending sensitive data
  • Mobile Provider: speeding up loading times and response times to improve user experience
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International

Why is a CDN something for you?

CDNs are primarily used for websites with an international audience. Do you have a service or business that operates internationally or do you want to get started with this? Then we definitely recommend using a CDN. Are you unsure whether a CDN adds value to your website? We'd be happy to look at it with you.

At Get Interactive, we use a very large and reliable Cloudflare network to protect our customers against DDoS attacks, also known as DDoS mitigation. Cloudflare offers comprehensive protection against DDoS attacks for Websites, applications, and networks with security measures such as a built-in DDoS blocker and DNSSEC, combined with a very fast response time.

Besides Cloudflare, we also use other things to protect your website. Think of a virus scanner, security scans, and a Firewall. All these components make your website safer and make it much harder for malicious people.

Need a CDN?

Get Interactive offers various hosting options with a CDN solution. Want to talk more about a CDN and your web hosting needs? Feel free to contact us, we're happy to help!

Get in touch
Link met Jeffrey (Technology Director)