CDN and Advanced Web Technology
Thanks to the growth of technology, the quality of the content produced by websites are also increased which caused a direct bulge of contents’ sizes. As expected, this caused a decrease in the speed performance of websites.
It looks like a good option to speed up the website to supply a better experience for visitors.
What is a CDN?
CDN is a content delivery network that ensures the content on a website is delivered more rapidly to viewers.
With a CDN service, your site content will be cached on multiple servers distributed all around the world, thus users will be able to view your site faster than ever. These content delivery networks occur in a server group strategically located in different places on Earth. This way, your website traffic will be divided efficiently.
The main purpose of a content delivery network is higher response speed on requests arriving on the website, and to reduce the load on the origin server.
How Does a CDN Service work?
Servers within this content delivery network are strategically located all around the world in geographically separated places. Site contents are cached on these servers.
Requests directed to your server will be responded to from the geographically closest server to the client. So, these requests won’t be traveled long ways through the world, this will help speed up your response times.
This geographic distribution provides a decrease in the origin server’s load. Site contents cached on the CDN servers will be expired at the end of a determined period, and then with the first incoming request, site content is going to be cached again and renewed.
This means the website will be up-to-date frequently, and visitors will be viewing current content, not the old ones.
Caching configurations can change according to the types of your site content. Frequently renewed data are called dynamic contents and on the other hand, data not much frequently renewed such as images and videos are called static contents.
Caching on dynamic contents needs faster renewing so the durations can be relatively shorter than static contents.
What is Cache?
Caching provides a better-felt performance for the end-user, every visits that a website gets visitor after first visit. It is a similar process with a web browser caching the website to improve the later experience on it.
The content cached on CDN servers or web browsers is already written on the memory so you can access it easily later than the first experience on the website. This helps your website loadings show a remarkable improvement. Web browser caches are found on your local hard disk, so it will be faster than retrieving data from a faraway server.
This caching system provides you with a better experience while you are surfing on the net, as well as constitutes the primary mechanism of content delivery networks.
Essentially, it works the same on CDN systems, but caching occurs on content delivery network servers and the cache files are held there.
How is the Caching Time Determined?
CDN servers help you to hold the site content and decrease the response time of requests. This provides fewer transactions between the origin server and the content delivery network servers. Caching offers huge benefits on performance felt by the website’s end-user.
Caching time varies by content type. Data not frequently renewed are called static contents, this characteristic necessitates longer caching periods. Static contents don’t change as much as dynamic contents, so there is no need to retrieve data from the origin server again and again.
On the other hand, dynamic contents have opposite properties. They change more frequently, so need to be updated more often. For this reason, to give brand new site content to viewers, dynamic contents need shorter caching periods with more often caching renewals.
If the caching TTLs are too long, then visitors may view out-of-date content.
Takes an Active Role on Upgrading Website Loading Speed!
The internet is a network where contents are delivered by wires almost all around the world. The delivery and response time of a request is directly proportionate to the distance in between. The closer the request is to the origin server, the sooner the response will be sent and the faster the web page will load.
Content Delivery Network aims to ensure that the site content is loaded in the fastest way by also ensuring the request is responded from the geographically nearest server. Thus, an increase is observed in the loading speed of the website pages.
Many studies mentioned that the visitors immediately leave the websites that are loaded in more than 3 seconds. Therefore, website speed is affected by how close you are to your potential customers.
The speed of a website, which enables visitors to have a positive user experience, increases the rate of conversion of website visitors into customers.
Improve SEO Performance Using CDN!
Your website speed directly affects your SEO performance. Websites that Google bots can crawl quickly have a higher chance of appearing on Google search results. Google tends to show websites with high site speed as sites that can provide a better user experience.
This will help you rank higher on Google.
Try Merlin CDN right away with $10 free credit and get higher rankings on Google search results by increasing your website speed immediately.
Increased Cyber Security Using Content Delivery Network!
Many types of cyberattacks can threaten your website. Using a CDN service can protect your website from these attacks and minimize the threats by responding to all incoming requests, including the malicious ones, not directly from your origin server but from CDN servers. This will reduce the risks of cyberattacks.
The fact that the request is not directly connected with the origin server can prevent the damage of cyberattacks.
For example, this is how you prevent a DDoS attack that suddenly creates a high traffic load on a server. Content Delivery Network servers are prepared for these types of attacks which require high bandwidth to prevent, and they will ensure that your origin server is not affected by DDoS attacks.
Thus, you can prevent problems such as website crashes, and consequently save on technical and maintenance costs.
What is the Difference Between Hosting and a CDN Service?
These two concepts, which can be confusing when they come together, as a matter of fact, are two worlds apart.
The hosting server is the origin server of your website. All the site content is stored there. A deletion to be made here will permanently damage your website if there is no backup. The content delivery network caches your site content from your origin server and keeps these cache files on its servers. Changes made on the website (origin server) will be observed on these CDN servers after the next caching.
CDN servers cannot work without a hosting server because the main place that your website content is stored in the hosting server.
Generally, there are 1 or 2 hosting servers, depending on the size and the structure of the website. There is a much higher number of CDN servers than hosting servers, due to the structure of the concept.
That's why CDN is a more logical and optimized solution for the distribution of your content.
What is the Cost of a CDN Service?
Pricing on this service has 2 different options specific to Merlin CDN. You can start using with pay as you go or by purchasing a plan that suits your needs.
Depending on the need, the method to be chosen in the use of this service may differ. The plan, which will be chosen according to the monthly traffic load of the website, can be upgraded or downgraded in the next billing period if necessary.
Before choosing the billing method, you can try Merlin CDN with a predefined $10 free credit on the panel.
Start trying now and immediately notice the performance boost on your website content!
What Could Your Site Encounter Without a CDN?
Along with the development in technology, data roaming all around the world has increased more and more and become complicated. Basically, the internet and data on it which are accessed via cables are transmitted to the necessary places in accordance with the requests of certain servers. With the development of CDN technology, this roaming network in the world takes on a different structure.
On the other hand, you can read our “What is Video CDN? (VOD & Streaming CDN)” blog article to have detailed information about CDN service.
If you don’t use a CDN service: Your website may crash down in unexpected traffic!
A website that does not use CDN servers, generally works depending on an origin server. This means that there is a high probability for your site to get harmed by the increased traffic in an unbalanced way.
If you have a website like this, you should not forget that your site is under threat of crashing at any moment without using CDN.
For example, if you have a news site and share the breaking news and get intense attention or you have an e-commerce site offering incredible discounts, without CDN servers you will not be able to provide an effective user experience to your visitors trying to enter your website at the same time.
Don't keep your website visitors away from you
If your website has an international effect and reaches all around the world, accessibility is one of the features that makes your site strong. Providing the same user experience to each visitor, regardless of its locations, should be one of the priorities of the sites.
On the other hand, in case your servers can’t keep up with this international roaming speed or you don’t use a CDN service, your site may not perform the same in every location and eventually affects your user experience negatively.
And if you don’t use a CDN service, your visitors may want to leave the site due to the distance from your origin server and low loading speed of your website.
Don’t negatively affect your SEO performance
There are so many factors to affect your SEO performance from a CDN perspective. The most notable one is the loading speed of your website. The loading speed of your website is directly related to the user experience and highly affects your SEO performance.
This speed is measured by search engines and it is really important for Google ranking. During the waiting time in a page, the possibility to leave the site for a visitor is increasing with every passing second.
The loading speed of your website is inversely proportional to the number of requests and visitors at that moment. It can be difficult for a website that does not use a CDN service to meet these two important requirements. The websites that don’t have these features, are listed in the lower ranks because of receiving a low evaluation score by Google algorithms.
Since CDN servers take the load of your origin server, they increase the loading speed of your site to maximum levels and allow you to get the highest level of user experience.
Your website may be vulnerable to cyber attacks!
Even if your website performance is at a good level, security is always another important topic to be careful. If your website isn’t protected enough, it can be vulnerable to web-based cyber attacks such as XSS, SQL Injection and DDoS. For this reason, crashes may occur and may have a negative impact on your visitors.
On the other hand, attackable and vulnerable sites may be evaluated negatively by Google algorithms and eventually this can result in a decrease in your SEO performance. In this case, you may not be able to protect your site from attacks and damage its popularity.
There is one point to not forget that Google algorithms help website visitors using the search engine to get the most effective solution and choose the safest way while offering these solutions.
High costs of technical maintenance
If you don’t use a CDN service, you need to direct the whole traffic of your website through your origin server. So, the negative situations such as low loading speed, site crashes and other cyber attacks caused by your suddenly increasing website traffic, require you to have extra maintenance to solve your website's problems or to use defense systems to protect your site from cyber attacks.
In addition to extra costs, since you cannot get traffic to your site during the maintenance periods required to solve the problems of your website, there is a possibility that you may experience negative effects on the listing of your site indirectly and this can affect your SEO performance directly.
If you want to be accessible from anywhere in the fastest way, to avoid sudden site crashes and to provide your users with the most effective user experience, you can start using Merlin CDN today with $10 free credit.