5 Benefits of CDNs and How They Complement Cloud Computing

neuCentrIX - 07/01/2022 14:13

Cloud computing has been playing a big, important role in the context of modern business. With this in mind, it’s very common to think that cloud computing is enough.

It’s true to some extent. Cloud computing offers two major advantages: flexibility and scalability. It allows you to scale up and add more servers in the case of heavy workload, such as during traffic spikes. It also helps you achieve better performance by allowing you to distribute server tasks, upgrade the amount of your server memory, increase the amount of your RAM, and replace your CPU with a more powerful one.

However, when it comes to content, data, and applications delivery, is cloud computing really enough?

The Benefits of CDNs
It’s time for you to get to know CDNs. In terms of characteristics, cloud computing and CDNs are similar because both use geographically distributed servers to deliver content. However, in terms of focus and emphasis, they’re actually different; cloud computing handles, well, the computing function while CDNs handle the delivery function. When it comes to delivering large volumes of content and data quickly and seamlessly, CDNs benefit you in five ways.

1. Improve Your Site Speed and Performance
When we talk about download speed and latency, geographical location matters. With a CDN, your users don’t need to wait for their request to go to the origin server; they can access the content they want from the servers nearest to them. Moreover, a CDN’s network of servers is completed with the ability to cache content — content is kept at the strategically distributed servers and made readily available to users. Due to these features, a CDN reduces your page load times and improves your site performance, helping you provide a better experience to your users.

2. Prevent Server Overloads
A CDN also has the ability to distribute and balance load among the servers in its network. This feature is useful for you during peak times and traffic spikes, such as product launches, promotional periods, or viral campaigns. It prevents crashes and server overloads.

3. Give Better Insights about Your Audience
Another ability a CDN has is providing valuable insights about your traffic. CDNs today are responsible for around half of the world’s internet traffic. This means that, through CDNs, you can collect vast amounts of data on your users, such as their internet connectivity, device usage, etc. You can then analyze this data to gain intelligence and actionable insights about what your users like, what their habits are like, and more.

4. Enable Advanced Website Security
The nature of CDNs is especially helpful in the case of DDoS attacks — a thread where attackers overwhelm an important DNS server by sending a large volume of requests with the goal of bringing this server down and along with it the website. A CDN can prevent such attacks by distributing the load equally across the entire network. What’s more, a CDN is alo completed with the ability to adopt the most up-to-date encryption methods and apply them without impacting your usual operation.

5. Allow You to be Cost-Effective
A CDN does this in three ways. First, with a CDN, you can generate more users and more revenue by offering better user experience. Second, you can gain this benefit by paying only what you use without any costs of infrastructure setup. Third, a CDN optimizes your bandwidth use by limiting request volumes and data transfers.

Cloud Computing and CDNs Together
As discussed above, cloud computing allows you to easily scale up your resources when needed, but CDNs enable you to deliver large amounts of content quickly and seamlessly to your users. Using both together creates a more resilient and reliable delivery strategy for your content, data, and applications than either could do alone. They eliminate each other’s single points of failure while allowing you to make efficient use of your resources.