How do you explain CDN in layman's term?
What is the simple explanation aside from making your website load fast?

Thanks in advance.

The way i see it is,

Its a bunch of servers all around the world that 'host' your files.

When a user connects to your site, They download the files from the closest server for the fastest possible performance.

All servers are synced so everyone gets the same file.

You normally host your own site however, But the CDN holds the bigger stuff.

Thanks for the post.
That is my partial understanding as well.

However, I'm wondering how fast is the difference between the usual hosting setup and if you have CDN.

It's not going to be a perceivable difference for you unless you're considerably far from your origin server. If you are fairly close to the origin server a CDN could even reduce performance as it adds another layer of communication.

Of course for large sites with a diverse/global audience, a CDN can make sense - but for most sites, it isn't necessary at all.

Thanks for the post.
That is my partial understanding as well.

However, I'm wondering how fast is the difference between the usual hosting setup and if you have CDN.

It also depends on what exactly you are hosting. A CDN becomes more useful as you have more images or static content on your site that are large and clients connecting from all around the world.

Also remember not all CDNs are the same. If you use a CDN make sure the one you select has nodes in the areas where you expect visitors to come from.

OK,

A CDN goes like this:

A Content Delivery Network consists of a network of servers called "POP's" (points-of-presence) at key locations across the globe ensuring they have a reasonably small distance to nearly all locations in developed countries.

Whilst you may well be close to your originating server (your standard hosting account) location wise (such as a UK developer using a UK host) your visitors are worldwide, meaning US visitors for example will find the performance of your site not nearly as fast as you see it in the UK.

Using the CDN, you can have many elements of your site such as images, javascript, css files, music, video and so on all being served up from the CDN's POP in the US (much nearer your visitor) leaving only text content, of which is much smaller in size left to be served all the way from the UK.
The result, a much faster browsing experience for your user, improved retention rates (great for shops/media rich sites) and less user frustration all round.

It would take much more writing to explain how you go about implementing the CDN and exactly how it goes about grabbing the content and serving it through the POP's and so on, though I can do if anyone needs this explaining.

<<snipped>>

Thanks for all the responses and I apologize for my ignorance on this topic.

For those of you who signed up to some CDN provider, what do they usually provide to you?
Is there some sort of control panel?
Do you upload your files on a specific sever?
Do I need to make some special scripting or programming to use CDN?

Thank you in advance.

Well, the CDN I work with offers a Control Panel to create/edit/remove CNAME's, setup more sites, etc...

No files need to be uploaded to the CDN itself as it takes them from your webserver upon request and copies them across all the POP's (see my previous post).

As far as integration is concerned, if you're using a CMS such as Wordpress/Drupal, I can point you in the directions of plugins to facilitate easy CDN implementation for all varieties of media types you may have on your site.
If its a static site, then a search and replace tools makes light work of changing URL's to content to replace them for the location of the media upon the CDN.

Well, the CDN I work with offers a Control Panel to create/edit/remove CNAME's, setup more sites, etc...

No files need to be uploaded to the CDN itself as it takes them from your webserver upon request and copies them across all the POP's (see my previous post).

As far as integration is concerned, if you're using a CMS such as Wordpress/Drupal, I can point you in the directions of plugins to facilitate easy CDN implementation for all varieties of media types you may have on your site.
If its a static site, then a search and replace tools makes light work of changing URL's to content to replace them for the location of the media upon the CDN.

I'm using Wordpress and I just learned W3 Total Cache. However, when I checked its compatibility with my provider it seems that I need to request to enable some variables to use it.

However, I also want to learn CDN from the simple static website points of view (for foundation).

It's not going to be a perceivable difference for you unless you're considerably far from your origin server. If you are fairly close to the origin server a CDN could even reduce performance as it adds another layer of communication.

Of course for large sites with a diverse/global audience, a CDN can make sense - but for most sites, it isn't necessary at all.
Yes for sites like yahoo, sears, amazon etc it makes sense to use a CDN
All of these sites uses Akamai

While for static file sharing CDN could be a perfect solution, for live streaming (except HTTP Live streaming) classical CDNs are not usable.

The way i see it is,

Its a bunch of servers all around the world that 'host' your files.

When a user connects to your site, They download the files from the closest server for the fastest possible performance.

All servers are synced so everyone gets the same file.

You normally host your own site however, But the CDN holds the bigger stuff.

Thanks for the info. It's like Google having several servers around the world. Wherever you are, you're search attempt shall be redirected to the nearest server of your place.

However, I'm wondering how fast is the difference between the usual hosting setup and if you have CDN.
With a site primed and ready on a good cdn your visitors will go "woah" as the page goes BAM! and load so quickly it smacks them in the face and they feel like the computer is waiting impatiently for them, rather than the reverse.

it also depends on your cdn provider. they could just have a few nodes here and there, or many throughout the world. this is especially apparent when someone's site is hosted in USA and i visit it from Australia. if their CDN provider has nodes in oz (which is rare) it loads super fast, otherwise it loads normal unimpressive speed.

the other benefits are that the bandwidth can sometimes be cheaper than sourcing it yourself (because they have more buying power), and your website can now cope with a 1000x increase or sudden spike in traffic (if its cached properly).
these are just as important than the speed. in many cases more important (you may realize this the day you get slashdotted or equivilent)

some people source cdn's simply because google pagespeed or yslow says they should. but with several cdn optimized sites and access to akamai and cdnetworks im still yet to be convinced. browsers already load images n stuff as fast as they can, regardless of the domain they come from.

For those of you who signed up to some CDN provider, what do they usually provide to you?
Is there some sort of control panel?
every provider is different unfortunately

Do you upload your files on a specific sever?
cdn is a bit of a generic term.
theres many different types of cdn's that you'll come across
- usually the cheapest ones require you (or a script) to upload the files to the cdn. you link your images/css/media/etc to the cdn, eg: <img src="http://cdn.mywebsite.com/blah.jpg">
(some wordpress / drupal modules can handle this automatically)
- more expensive, is a mirror (or reverse proxy) type cdn, where it takes over hosting of your website and if it doesnt have a copy of the file someone requests it goes to your origin server and gets a copy. the next time someone wants that file it has a copy ready in memory. <img src="/blah.jpg">
(some wordpress and drupal modules can tweak your output to ensure the cdn caches the files properly)
- theres also video / audio hosting cdn's specificly designed to deliver video in such a way that its compatible with all video players that can seek to any position, eg when you fast forward in youtube (which normally you cant easily do on normal cdn hosting)
- and other tunneling cdn products that you probably dont care about ;)

Do I need to make some special scripting or programming to use CDN?
for a properly setup site (with proper browser caching headers), and a proper mirror type cdn setup is almost automatic and ready to go straight away.

for the ftp/upload type some plugins are available (wp-totalcache was already mentioned), otherwise you can manually upload the files, or write your own scripts/etc.

I´ve read in different sites that a new variation of CDN is being developed. It is called GDN for Gamers/Gaming and it is gamer-oriented (online gamers I believe). Anyway, I´ll post some links for those interested in it. I´ll now start looking for the subject in this forum, maybe somebody is already talking about it!
xxx
F.