Cloud Computing: Choosing the right content delivery network
February 6, 2013
Grazed from CloudTech. Author: Sharon Florentine.
Welcome to Generation Now. Today’s users want information in an instant. Make them wait more than a second or two for your webpage to load and they’ll surf over to the first competitor who feeds their demand for instant gratification. Using a Content Delivery Network or Content Distribution Network (CDN) to quickly load static elements of your site to hasten access can deliver quicker gratification for customers. And stickier eyeballs — and greater profits — for you.
Basically, a CDN is a number of highly optimised web servers located around the globe, explains Joost de Valk in an article posted to Yoast.com. Though de Valk’s article deals specifically with using a CDN to speed performance of WordPress sites, a CDN is beneficial for almost any organisation with a Web presence, in any industry. Users expect that all elements of a site will load in an instant: web objects including text, graphics, URLs and scripts, downloadable objects like media files, software, documents, e-commerce applications, portals, streaming media and the ubiquitous social networks…
Put another way, CDNs can benefit heavily-trafficked sites, regardless of topic; video sites or sites that offer other types of downloadable files and sites promoted on Digg.com or other "trending" web sites. CDNs work by distributing static data to geographically disperse servers worldwide. When users access your site, static content will be delivered from the server that’s closest to their physical location using Pull URLs that point to a specific directory on your servers. This leads to huge performance improvements for sites that have visitors from all across the world, de Valk said…
Read more from the source @ http://www.cloudcomputing-news.net/news/2013/feb/05/choosing-the-right-content-delivery-network/