What does Content Delivery Network [CDN] mean?

A CDN is a network through which content is transmitted and delivered, which is an abbreviation for the term [Content Delivery Network], and it relies on synchronized servers connected to each other through the Internet in multiple regions around the world, providing an updated version of sites or data over the Internet.

What is the concept of CDN?

In the previous lines, we explained to you the meaning of the term CDN, which means the content delivery network, which is responsible for transferring the content of a site from the nearest server to the user.

A content delivery network [CDN] is a group of geographically distributed servers that work together to deliver content faster to users around the world with different geographical locations, and greatly helps reduce the load on the site’s primary server by distributing to multiple servers.

The CDN optimizes the speed of the website to the maximum degree by finding and displaying the archived site on servers close to the visitor, helping to speed up the browsing process and improve the user experience, and the CDN also helps websites to withstand the largest number of visitors at the same moment and significantly save server resources and reduce loads on it.

It is also important to use a CDN for each site due to the many advantages that you will get, especially security, through these networks it is possible to withstand and repel many cyberattacks, especially DDos Attack, known as a denial of service attack, SSL / TLS encryption and other security features.

How does a content delivery network work?

The content delivery network consists of a large number of connected servers located in many and multiple regions around the world Data Center, which allows content delivery operations to site visitors securely without high costs, and with great efficiency and speed.

There are so-called exchange points, which are main sites and are the link between Internet providers, to access traffic in networks, these sites facilitate the work of connection networks as a result of connecting to them, when servers are placed inside exchange points, the delivery of standard server or client information is better, and delivery networks help to identify suitable places for data centers around the world.

Sometimes getting content requires that the distance be small, so you will get the topic you are looking for quickly, hence the importance of large networks that facilitate this process by bringing the content closer to consumers.

When there is a powerful server that is easy to watch videos, it is chosen to deliver content to the visitor, and the media is temporarily saved within the server, to perform another request in the same geographical place, and these connection networks provide the delivery of high-quality videos, various applications, etc.

Let’s simplify the idea for you, when a visitor enters a site, a direct connection is established with the site’s server [hosting company] before opening the site to him, the location of the primary server is fixed, for example: In the United States of America, with each visitor who enters the site, another connection is established similar to the first connection with the primary server, and when a large number of visitors enter, multiple connections are established for them at the same time, which increases the pressure on the server, and very slow browsing will occur and The server stops working.

Here comes the role of CDNs, they are a large group of different servers distributed around the world, these servers store a mirror image of the site on all servers to be displayed to all visitors, and storage includes all the contents of the site.

When you visit the site, the network transfers you to a copy of the site hosted on a server close to your geographical location, and this will save and reduce the load on the server significantly and increase the speed of browsing the site.

Why do we need a CDN?

This network undoubtedly changes the characteristics of the sites and this through the following:

• The network provides fast page loading speeds for sites.
• It helps the primary server to withstand as much traffic as possible.
• Reduce site failures by distributing pressure to a sufficient number of servers.
• It helps you get more traffic, as well as reduces bounces.
• Help reduce the amount of money paid to hosting companies to save them in hosting resources, especially [bandwith]].
• The network provides security for sites through the use of certain tools and changing settings for WordPress.
• Make your site one of the first sites to appear on the Internet in search engines.

The components on which building content delivery networks depends:

There is more than one component or node through which this network is designed, and they are as follows:

• First, the control nodes, through which the components of the network, hosting and management are controlled.
• Second, the contract of origin, which is the primary source from which the contents are extracted, and is executed on the network or in the content owner’s infrastructure.
• Third, storage nodes, here the data is placed in the cache, and the person through the storage node can do a pre-publication of any content, preferably the data is stored in a hierarchical form, for more space.
• Fourth, the delivery contract, which consists of a delivery application and more than one cache, and through these nodes the data is delivered to site visitors.

What are the types of content?

The sites consist of three contents:

• Live streaming content: Here audio and video are hosted and displayed through a web browser.
• Static content: It is like basic site files such as JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and images, and this type of content is not changed frequently.
• Dynamic content: Here programming languages such as Java are used by the server to create this content on the go.

Stages of connection network configuration

This network was established about 20 years ago and its development processes went through stages, the first of which was the stage before formation, and among the events in which it took place:

• Server development.
• Caching and proxy applications.
• Apply a pyramid-shaped caching.
• Improving infrastructure.
• Update multiple reception.
• Comprehensive improvements in content transfers.

This period is followed by the period of the first generation, in which:

• Static and dynamic contents are provided.
• This generation relied on modern computing, intelligent routing and replicas.
• Data and applications were distributed to more than one server.

In the second generation stage, the following was done:

• Focus on videos in time of need.
• Beginnings were laid that helped provide content to phone owners.
• This generation helped use cloud computing technology as well as P2P.

Now comes the third generation, which is still under development, and it may happen in this generation that the user activates the systems, and the method of installation, preparation and management is carried out by himself, providing contents independently.

The impact of the CDN on improving SEO search results

In fact, the impact of CDN content delivery networks on SEO search results optimization processes is remarkable, as activating the network helps improve the ranking of the website, but indirectly, and this comes by increasing the speed of the CDN-based site, so the site can take an advanced ranking on search engines during technical searches.

The main objective of installing a CDN is to raise the speed of the website in addition to enabling the site to deal with the latest types of technology, the most important of which is HTTPS securely, in addition to using the latest HTTP\2 protocol that is able to improve the speed of the site during the operation process for the benefit of the user, in addition to raising the site’s ranking on search engines by increasing the speed and security of the site.

The CDN works to raise the site’s viewing rates, in the event that the site is fast and secure, the bounce rates of browsers will decrease from the site, there is a strong correlation between the speed of the website and its ranking on search engines and improving the user experience.

The only main factor that depends on the impact of the content delivery network on improving search results remains, which is the commitment of service providers to the instructions for the settings of the content delivery network in a way that does not allow any harm to SEO, which imposes on those in charge of the site extreme care when implementing all these instructions correctly.

At first, it seems very difficult, as activating the CDN requires many steps that may be difficult at first, but in reality you will only need to understand the site and its content and prepare this content correctly, and thus the difficulty of setting up a CDN can be overcome.

Best CDN Companies for WordPress

Most content delivery companies work with many sites, whether you use a content management script or use special programming, and there is more than one content delivery network that WordPress owners can choose from, which are:

Bunny CDN

Bunny CDN is a performance-based company based in Slovenia founded in 2015 by a group of skilled and enthusiastic teams with more than 10 years of experience in CDN content delivery and other diverse technologies.

The services of this company can be used on sites that use the WordPress content management script easily through the software extension provided by the company.

BunnyCDN has many data centers around the world on all continents, the company has 35 data centers in Europe, North America 22 data centers, Australia 6 centers, Asia has 26 data centers, the Middle East and Africa has 11 data centers, and in Latin America it owns 14 data centers.

Thus, the company is proud to have 114 centers and points of contact for data transfer at high speeds, making the response speed about 26 milliseconds, the rate of temporary file storage (cash) by 95%, and hosting and distributing more than one million websites currently in more than 77 countries around the world.

StackPath Company

StackPath CDN (formerly MaxCDN) is an innovative content delivery and delivery network that provides cutting-edge web services. StackPath CDN provides you with better speed and less server loading time to private websites.

StackPath provides a service to compress and reduce the size of site files such as texts, CSS files, HTML, etc., which helps speed up work and reduce bandwidth consumption, and many other features such as protection, acceleration and a comprehensive software interface.

KeyCDN Corporation

KeyCDN is an easy-to-use content delivery network (CDN) that offers a powerful set of features at a very low price.

The company offers affordable pricing plans with trials of up to a full month, the company uses SSD storage units with two-factor authentication for the highest standards of data encryption, and a lot of features.

The only problem you may have[not a big deal] is the minimum payment, the minimum amount to charge the account with 49 USD is the minimum amount that can be deposited to the account, and the company needs to take another look at the contract it concludes with customers.

We also note that the company’s server network is not very large compared to BunnyCDN, which has 114 connection points, with relatively slow notes at times.

Cloudflare Company

Cloudflare barely knows or at least has heard of this company; it’s the No. 1 free CDN provider in CDN, and ranked number one in data protection (DDoS)..

Cloudflare has a small global network designed to improve security along with performance and reliability only without amplifying legacy technologies. Cloudflare CDN is very easy to set up, very affordable, and it works better than any other content delivery network. But their premium plans are a bit expensive, and the customer needs to pay at least $20 for one month, which is not the solution for everyone.

There are currently millions of websites using Cloudflare services, and the Cloudflare network continues to grow daily with thousands of customers, the company is able to seamlessly fulfill the requests of millions of websites and serves an average of 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has secure data centers in nearly 300 cities around the world to ensure that every customer’s request is met as quickly as possible, making Cloudflare’s state-of-the-art network keep content and other services as close to each customer as possible, so information requests are always just seconds away.

Cloudflare has a lot of features, including a much faster load time compared to competitors due to the huge amount of data centers the company has, with strong domain security through DNS, and a cloud firewall (WAF).

Cloudflare provides a global SSL protection certificate completely free of charge for all sites, the ability to compress and optimize images and site files, with the ability to adjust caching for all sites and browsers, and many other features.

The most important point is that many of the best global hosting companies provide this service for free to customer sites, and the most prominent of these companies are Bluehost hosting,GreenGeeks hosting andHost Jetour hosting.