Online video streaming is becoming more popular as the majority of people spend time watching videos online is mainly due to the good customer experience delivered due to supporting online technologies such as content delivery networks. If a business wants to broadcast a video about the product or service they want it to reach most of the people globally this is where the content delivery network comes into play
CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Content delivery networks are groups of interconnected servers located globally all around the world used to transfer content such as HTML Pages, Javascript files, videos, audios and images. CDN is mainly responsible for delivering content to end-users. It basically caches the data and stores data in multiple locations. Most of the website traffic is transferred through Content Delivery Network.
Content Delivery Networks are groups of servers located strategically all over the globe and content is cached in most globally distributed servers. Video is stored securely and delivered at a faster rate when the user requests it. When viewer request a video from CDN, it originally tries to deliver the content from the closest server(also known as edge server ) possible as it is the nearest server twill have file cached or otherwise, it sends viewer request to another server that has media cached
In this way, CDN delivers the media content to the viewer from the local server rather than sending it from the central server each time. It basically reduces the time of content delivery and distance between users and servers. CDN plays a major role in delivering high-quality content with faster delivery to end-users
Why is CDN Important and its Advantages?
Scalability and Quality:
Transfer of media content through CDNs helps in reaching many people all around the world and It helps in transferring the video content to the end-user at a faster rate and also without any deterioration in video quality.
Improving Customer Experience :
CDN helps to achieve a good customer experience in terms of speed without any buffers and lag by sending streaming data through its high-speed pathways to reach a vast audience all around the globe from the nearest servers.
Reliability and Distributing traffic across all servers
It prevents website crashes by distributing all the traffic across all the servers rather than a single-origin server managing all website traffic. CDN is designed to manage a large number of users accessing the website without making the origin server overloaded
Improves the performance of the Website
Content cached and kept ready at most of the edge servers. When users invoke a request, the content is delivered from the closest location without any lag thereby improving the overall performance of the website. Reduces the loading time of the website and increases the amount of time spent on the website. This makes users stay for a longer time on the website.
Increased Security
A content Delivery Network is a group of servers distributed all around the world that is designed to be protected from any type of attacks like Distributed denial of Service attacks. Even when there is an unnatural increase in traffic intended to crash the website CDN with many servers will be able to absorb this kind of traffic in order to keep website online even during these attacks
Improve SEO
CDN helps in improving the performance of the website, improves the loading speed of the website by delivering the content at a rapid pace and provides additional security, considering all these factors will influence the web page rank higher in google search page results
Cost-Effective
Content Delivery networks are much cheaper when compared to Web Hosting Services. CDN are worth investing in. Most money is spent when transferring data from the origin server forth and back whereas in CDN content are cached and stored in edge servers so there is less data that needs to be transferred from the origin server. CDN distributes bandwidth across all the servers.
Content Availability and Redundancy
CDN makes the content available for all the users even when there is a spike in website traffic and they can handle very heavy traffic by distributing content across all the servers and withstand hardware failure better than origin servers. Even if there is hardware failure then traffic is distributed from other nearest servers so at every time user can access the website without any issues
Reduces Latency and Delay
CDN typically reduces the distance between resources and users. The user receives data from the locally located server and the file is compressed so that it can be transferred at a faster rate without any lag. The main cause of delay is due to the large distance between server and users so reduce the physical distance and CDN comes into play where edge server located locally to users where content is stored and delivered quickly when user request an access
Conclusion
Content Delivery Networks play a major role in transferring video content quickly, reliably and cheaply. It is one of the important factors in better performance of the website and increased customer experience and satisfaction. Global CDN will help in making your video content reach globally and it will ultimately help in scaling up your Video Streaming Business
