We never realise the significance of content delivery networks or CDNs till we are affected by non-delivery. Fastly Inc from San Francisco suffered an outrange in June 2021 for an hour which took down websites including the NYT, Bloomberg News and the UK government.

CDN is a bridge between a website or app and a user. It pushes data quickly around the Internet on behalf of most popular online companies. To do this, they host multiple servers. They direct people who access a web page to the nearest one geographically, rather than taking them to the origin. A company’s website may be based in India, and it gets traffic from the UK. It is possible for a CDN to have a server in the UK that will take the user there.

CDNs are best for for popular high traffic websites and ones who offer heavy files to download.

The major CDNs are Cloudfare, Akamai, and MaxCDN.

CDNs deliver high resolution video without disruption. When there is a surge in demand, they divert traffic to different servers.

CDNs are expensive. They may not have servers everywhere. Thus the websites suffer when there is an outrage at the CDNs.