Content Delivery/Distribution network (CDN)
CDN is a group of servers which are globally distributed. These groups of servers work together to provide a faster delivery of internet content. It is an essential part of the modern internet world. The content that you view such as youtube, twitter, Instagram are all delivered using Content Delivery Network.
Why is CDN so important?
It’s imperative for an internet company to utilize the services of a CDN. As to why this is necessary, the reasons are mentioned below;
To reduce the Loading Time of websites: What would happen if the website you wanted to open took a lot of time? You would get frustrated right! What CDN does is that it reduces that time. So the website that you are trying to land in loads faster, and you have a quick website on hand that results in the visitors sticking around longer on your page.
To improve the Website Security: Larger Companies also utilize CDN as a firewall. Meaning, a CDN can also act as the first line of defense by isolating and blocking bad traffic from good traffic. This prevents your website from some common malicious attacks such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS).
To reduce Bandwidth Costs: One of the primary expenses for websites is Bandwidth Consumption costs. CDNs help in reducing the amount of data an origin server (Company’s server) must provide. CDNs do this through caching and other optimizations. This helps in reducing hosting costs of websites.
To Increase Content Availability: A CDN can handle more traffic than origin servers due to their distributed nature. Due to the same reason, they can also withstand hardware failures better than many origin servers. This helps in increasing content availability even if the company’s origin servers are down.
How does CDN reduce time taken to load websites?
Let’s understand this by an example. Let’s say you are a resident of Delhi. You have built an awesome ecommerce website. Now you host it on a server which is located in Delhi. All the files which are needed for your website are located in this server. When a user access your website all the information is loaded to him or her from the server in Delhi
Now a user in New York tries to access your website. What do you think will happen? Will your website load faster or slower? It will be slow as compared to when a user in Mumbai tries to access the same website.
Why? Because the geographical distance between the customer and server plays an important role in adding a few hundred milliseconds in load time of a content. The only server in Delhi is almost 10,000 kms away from New York. These extra milliseconds which get added, makes for a frustrating user experience. Imagine if someone from Kerala wanted to buy a dress from your website. The moment he clicks on the page, it takes the website longer to load the page. And when the page gets loaded, the picture of the dress is taking longer to load. This delay in time is called latency. Greater the geographical distance between a user and the server, higher is the latency.
Now we already know that CDNs are globally distributed servers that are connected together. They store (referred to as ‘cache’) and deliver some or the entirety of your website’s content. Each of these interconnected servers in the CDN’s network is called a Point of Presence (PoP) or an edge server. These edge servers are responsible for delivering your content indirectly.
CDN reduces the geographical distance between the server and the user by being globalized distributed. This is how a CDN is able to reduce the load time. So the user who is in New York will be able to load your webpage as smoothly as the person sitting in New Delhi as he is able to harness the same ecommerce content from a server closer to him.
When any company utilizes a CDN for its website, the automatic result is that it takes a load off the company’s own servers. All the traffic coming on the company’s website gets distributed to the edge servers. These edge servers keep on serving content from its cache even when the company’s actual servers are not working. This gives the company some buffer time to solve issues on their own servers.
How does CredoHire utilize CDN?
CredoHire is an AI powered recruitment platform for startups where the Hiring Managers can hire freshers as well as experienced professionals. CredoHire utilizes ‘Cloudflare’ as a CDN service, as a primary caching and distribution server with the added benefit of firewall as well. The caching service helps in making the load time of CredoHire’s website faster. All the traffic of CredoHire is routed through Cloudflare which does its best to protect the website from malicious attacks. This in turn keeps the website up and running for our users.
The distributed network of Cloudflare CDN provides faster load times and reduces load on CredoHire servers. This enables the candidates from any part of the world to give their assessments on CredoHire’s platform without experiencing any lag in the website, credits to the globally distributed network of Cloudflare. The hiring managers can gain insights of candidates with the best user experience as well.
Cloudflare also serves as a DNS provider. One can think of DNS providers as an address directory or phone book for websites. Since Cloudflare is distributed across the world, the website name is resolved faster which in turn reduces the waiting time for loading the website of CredoHire and improves the User Experience.
The AI Platform of CredoHire is also free from any malicious attacks such as DDOS. The Cloudflare CDN service does its best in protecting CredoHire from bad traffic. Credohire has been and will be the platform to recruit most credible hires, and by utilizing Cloudflare as a CDN service it has also become a credible platform free from any malicious traffic.
