What is a CDN?
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a globally distributed network of servers that caches and delivers web content from locations geographically close to users. CDNs reduce latency, improve load times, and decrease load on the origin server.
How Does CDN Work?
CDNs work by caching static assets like images, CSS, JavaScript, and videos on edge servers around the world. When a user requests your website, the CDN serves content from the nearest edge server instead of your origin server, which could be thousands of miles away. Major CDNs like Cloudflare, AWS CloudFront, and Fastly have hundreds of edge locations globally.
Beyond performance, CDNs provide DDoS protection by absorbing malicious traffic across their distributed network, SSL/TLS termination at the edge, and bandwidth savings by reducing requests to your origin server. Many CDNs also offer image optimization, minification, and smart caching rules. For static websites, a CDN can eliminate the need for traditional hosting entirely.