Nowadays, the load speed and performance of a website affects its user experience and search engine ranking directly. Hence, web developers frequently look for new website performance tips to reduce the loading and download time of websites. As a network of distributed servers, content delivery networks (CDNs) make it easier for web application developers to deliver web page components and content in a faster and more efficient way.
The developers can further use a CDN to deliver web pages and content to users based on their current geographic locations. Also, they can use CDN to deliver a wide range of website content including text, images, graphics, scripts, documents, media files, and live/on-demand streaming media. Hence, a steady increase is being noted in the number of enterprises opting for CDN services to speed up performance of high-traffic websites and international web stores.
9 Reasons Why Most Enterprises opt for Content Delivery Networks
1) Network of Distributed Servers
Most web browsers restrict the number of file downloads or concurrent connections to a single domain. Hence, the components and content of a website are downloaded sequentially. Hence, the browser fails to load the entire web page quickly before all its files are retrieved. As noted earlier, a CDN is a network of distributed servers. The developers can use CDN services to host the files and resources on a separate domain. The separate domain allows web browsers to download website content without any restrictions and delay.
2) Reduce Distance between Website Visitors and Servers
Nowadays most enterprises use their websites as a global web store. Hence, the website is accessed regularly by users living in different regions. When all website resources are hosted on a single server, the website visitors have to use additional trans-continental electronic hops to access the website and its content. Most CDNs include localized data centers. Each time a user requests a web page, he will be redirected to the data center which is closest to him. Hence, a visitor can access the web page and content more quickly by avoiding trans-continental electronic hops.
3) Reduce Load on Main Web Server
While deploying a website, businesses often store all website resources and files on single server. The centralized web server helps businesses to save money, and maintain the website smoothly. But often the performance of the website is impacted when the load on the web server increases. CDN enables businesses to distribute the website content and files over a number of distributed servers. Hence, each business can distribute the website content and resources strategically to reduce load the main server.
4) Pre-caching of Files
A large percentage of popular and high-traffic websites nowadays use CDN services. There are always chances that a website visitor might have accessed the web page earlier through a popular CDN service. The CDN make the web browser cache the files and static resources of a website. Hence, the browser can use the pre-cached files to make the web page and content deliver to the visitor more quickly. The pre-caching of files further increases the performance of websites, while reducing load on server.
5) 100% Website Availability
Each business must make its website available 24X7 to enhance its brand value and goodwill. But the website may be unavailable to users temporarily due to a number of factors – hardware issues, network problems, or massive power outages. Most content delivery networks are designed with features to sense availability of server automatically. The sensing mechanism enables CDNs to redirect users to another server instantaneously. Hence, the user can access the website anytime and anywhere without any delay.
6) Cater More Concurrent Users
There are many instances when popular websites crashed due to sudden increase in number of concurrent users. When all files and resources of a website are hosted on a single sever, the number of additional users increase the load on web server drastically. But CDN enables businesses to distribute website content and resources strategically over a number of servers. The strategic placement of servers will reduce load on the main server, and increase network backbone by adding extra capacity.
7) Built-in Version Control Feature
Most web developer switch to the latest version of web technologies to enhance the functionality and performance of websites. But they still need to retain the code written in earlier versions of the web technology. For instance, web developers have to maintain CSS and CSS3 files simultaneously. The built-in version control feature of CDNs makes it easier for programmers to access specific files written in a specific version of CSS or JavaScript. Hence, the developers can take advantage of their existing code base, while availing the new features.
8) Comprehensive Website Analytics
Most commercial content delivery networks enable enterprises to monitor the performance of their website content and components. The comprehensive file usage reports generated by these CDNs help businesses collect a variety of useful data. The owners can combine the information with website analytics to assess the performance of their websites accurately. They can even identify the issues that prevent visitors from staying on a web page or downloading specific videos.
9) Option to Use Mobile-Specific CDNs
A number of people accessing websites on their mobile devices have been increasing rapidly. Hence, enterprises look for content delivery networks to optimize the performance of their website on smartphones, tablets and phablets. The businesses now have option to use mobile content delivery networks to optimize delivery of website content to various mobile devices over wireless network. The mobile CDNs further provides a number of advanced features like mobile device detection, and website content adaption to make the website load faster on a variety of mobile devices.
An enterprise also has option to choose from a number of CDN services. Along with the content delivery networks provided by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Amazon, an enterprise can also opt for commercial content delivery networks like Incapsula, MaxCDN, CDNetworks, CDN77, Akamai, Cachefly, and CDNSun. Each content delivery network enables developers to reduce the distance between the website visitor and the server delivering the content. But the enterprises have to incur additional expenses to avail the extra features provided by commercial content delivery networks.
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