CDN – Content Delivery Network At A Glance For Video/Audio Deliveries
Posted 22nd June 2012 at 05:12 AM by azmanar
Let me share what I understand about CDN. I’ll highlight features from a user’s point-of-view. This may help you decide on the kind of CDN suitable for your content delivery. The focus will be more on the right CDN service providers for video and audio deliveries.
CDN = Content Delivery Network.
A CDN helps bring our content to our users (visitors) from the CDN’s nearest caching server (edge server), also known as Point-Of-Presence (POP). As a result, our content (video, MP3, static pages, dynamic pages) are almost instantly delivered to users, faster than usual. For example, a video can be viewed very smoothly by users, with no visible buffering.
The most important role of CDN is to speed up content delivery to our targeted users.
Say we hosted a video in a server in Canada. When the video is watched by a user in Sri Lanka, this video is cached ( kept ) inside the nearest regional caching servers, say in New Delhi. The next time around, when someone from Bangladesh or India or Pakistan or Sri Lanka want to view the same video, it would be loaded extremely fast to the user’s PC.
Based on what I’ve searched, most CDNs have multiple POPs in the US, Canada, South America, Europe, India and Asia Pacific ( Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia ). Some CDNs are focused only in Europe and North America.
By using a CDN, you save bandwidth and would not overrun the quota given by your hosting provider. The bandwidth responsibility is taken over by the CDN provider. You have to pay for bandwidth usage to the CDN provider. They will deliver your content faster to your user.
There are many large retail CDN providers in the market namely – Amazon Web Services, MaxCDN, HP CDN, Rackspace CDN, CDN77 and GoGrid. There are also CDN resellers connecting multiple wholesale CDNs together, packaging them into guaranteed zero-failure deliveries at retail prices. One very good example is Turbobytes, basically a network technology company.
If you want to try a CDN, try Amazon Web Services, i.e. S3 for hosting your videos and Amazon CloudFront to deliver your videos. They give free usage for 12 months but they set some limits.
Take full advantage of the free period. Then stay on or move on to other services that meet your expectations and budget.
More info on how to choose a CDN to match your needs on this external blog.
CDN = Content Delivery Network.
A CDN helps bring our content to our users (visitors) from the CDN’s nearest caching server (edge server), also known as Point-Of-Presence (POP). As a result, our content (video, MP3, static pages, dynamic pages) are almost instantly delivered to users, faster than usual. For example, a video can be viewed very smoothly by users, with no visible buffering.
The most important role of CDN is to speed up content delivery to our targeted users.
Say we hosted a video in a server in Canada. When the video is watched by a user in Sri Lanka, this video is cached ( kept ) inside the nearest regional caching servers, say in New Delhi. The next time around, when someone from Bangladesh or India or Pakistan or Sri Lanka want to view the same video, it would be loaded extremely fast to the user’s PC.
Based on what I’ve searched, most CDNs have multiple POPs in the US, Canada, South America, Europe, India and Asia Pacific ( Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia ). Some CDNs are focused only in Europe and North America.
By using a CDN, you save bandwidth and would not overrun the quota given by your hosting provider. The bandwidth responsibility is taken over by the CDN provider. You have to pay for bandwidth usage to the CDN provider. They will deliver your content faster to your user.
There are many large retail CDN providers in the market namely – Amazon Web Services, MaxCDN, HP CDN, Rackspace CDN, CDN77 and GoGrid. There are also CDN resellers connecting multiple wholesale CDNs together, packaging them into guaranteed zero-failure deliveries at retail prices. One very good example is Turbobytes, basically a network technology company.
If you want to try a CDN, try Amazon Web Services, i.e. S3 for hosting your videos and Amazon CloudFront to deliver your videos. They give free usage for 12 months but they set some limits.
Take full advantage of the free period. Then stay on or move on to other services that meet your expectations and budget.
More info on how to choose a CDN to match your needs on this external blog.
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