What is a content delivery network (CDN)?
A CDN is a system of distributed servers that deliver pages and other Web content to a user, based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and the content delivery server. For example, if you’re located in California and want to access this blog post about AWS CloudFront, it will be served from an edge location near your home because we don’t want to send you all those images over a long distance (and slow down your browsing experience).
CDNs also provide added value to their customers by ensuring that content is delivered as fast as possible to clients. CDN servers are placed around the world and cached copies of frequently requested content are stored at these locations in order to reduce latency when delivering webpages or other files. When a user requests a website or file, the CDN routes the request to the server that can provide the lowest latency. If a cached copy exists, that copy is returned; if no such copy exists, the request is forwarded to an origin server to generate a response and then returned to the requesting user and also cached at one or more edge locations for future requests.
Conclusion
A CDN is an intelligent system that delivers webpages and other content to end users based on geographical locations of users, the server and web page. It also caches copies of frequently requested content in geographically dispersed servers so that when a user requests a particular website or file, the CDN routes the request to the server that can provide the lowest latency. If a cached copy exists, it’s returned; if no such copy exists, it forwards the request to an origin server to generate response which is then returned back to user and also cached at one or more edge locations for future requests.
With Webien Image Optimizer you get a fully WordPress compatible solution that included CDN and much more features that increase the loading time and performance on your website.