{"id":2782,"date":"2011-10-24T16:42:18","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T20:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/?p=2782"},"modified":"2017-05-24T15:06:03","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T19:06:03","slug":"content-delivery-networks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/2011\/10\/content-delivery-networks\/","title":{"rendered":"Content Delivery Networks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When our customers have bandwidth       limitations or latency issues, we often encourage them to use a       Content Delivery Network. A Content Delivery Network can offer a       variety of benefits. What is a Content Delivery Network and what       are       the pros and cons of using one?<\/p>\n<p>A Content Delivery Network is a       cluster       of web servers located in different parts of the world, that are       used       to deliver static content (like images, scripts, style sheets)       quickly to it&#8217;s users. Depending on the provider and services       needed,       a CDN can be global and located in different parts of the world,       or       it could be localized and located in different parts of a country.<\/p>\n<p>As with any technology, there are       advantages and disadvantages to using a CDN.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Advantages<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Lowers           bandwidth utilization. If most of the static content on the           website is being served through a CDN, less of your network           bandwidth is being used to serve up the static content.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Improves latency issues<\/span><\/span>. Since users will be assigned             to pull static content from web servers closest to them,             there will be fewer network hops for users, which will             prevent latency issues.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Disadvantages<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/shop.oreilly.com\/product\/9780596529307.do\">Sharing of resources                     with other customers<\/a><\/span><\/span>. CDN providers tend to share             their web servers across all their clientele, therefore             response times could be affected by traffic from other             websites sharing the same CDN.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/shop.oreilly.com\/product\/9780596529307.do\">Lack             of direct control.<\/a> If changes need to be made to the           content hosted on a CDN, the changes have to be made through           the CDN provider, which can be inconvenient to developers.<\/li>\n<li>Expense.           Depending on the content and the provider, CDNs can become           very expensive to use.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Content Delivery Networks can be used       to alleviate bandwidth constraints as well as improve page load       times, by having customers pull static content from web servers       closest to them. For example, if a business started off in the USA,       but had now expanded to the UK. If a CDN was used, UK customers       would load static content from a CDN located in the United       Kingdom,       which would require fewer hops across the network, and in turn       make       the page load faster. A CDN can be used on a smaller scale as       well. Let&#8217;s say that there is a business primarily located in the       East       Coast in the US, but has started to get load from West Coast       customers. If the West Coast customers pulled static content from       a       web server located in the West Coast, page load times for the West       Coast customers would improve.<\/p>\n<p>As a business grows and traffic to the       website increases, a Content Network Delivery network could be a       necessity. The next blog post will focus on the proper       procedure       for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/2011\/11\/tips-for-implementing-a-content-delivery-network\/\">implementing a CDN<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>-Margaret<br \/>\nEngineer at Web Performance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When our customers have bandwidth       limitations or latency issues, we often encourage them to use a       Content Delivery Network. A Content Delivery Network can offer a       variety of benefits. What is a Content Delivery Network and what       are       the pros and cons of using one?<br \/>\nA Content Delivery Network is a       cluster       of web servers located in different parts &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/2011\/10\/content-delivery-networks\/\">Continue reading &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-load-testing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2782"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5829,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782\/revisions\/5829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.webperformance.com\/load-testing-tools\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}