Copying the Internet Everywhere So It Loads Faster
Content delivery networks store copies of websites and content in many locations worldwide, so users get it from nearby, making the internet faster. They sell speed and reliability as infrastructure to everyone online.
Making the Internet Fast
A website or piece of content served from a single location loads slowly for users far away, since the data must travel a long distance. Content delivery networks, or CDNs, solve this by storing copies of content in many locations worldwide, so users get it from a nearby location rather than a distant one, making the internet faster. They sell speed and reliability as infrastructure to everyone with an online presence.
The CDN maintains a network of servers distributed globally, storing copies of its customers content close to users everywhere, so that when a user requests content, it comes from a nearby server rather than a distant origin, loading faster. This distributed infrastructure provides speed and reliability to the websites and services that use it, making them faster and more resilient for users worldwide. The CDN sells this speed and reliability as infrastructure, serving the vast range of online businesses and services that need their content to load fast for users everywhere, which is a fundamental need of the internet.
Distance slows the internet down. A CDN beats distance by keeping a copy of everything close to everyone, so the content is never far away, which is why the fast internet quietly runs on this invisible infrastructure.
How It Works
The CDN distributes copies of content across many locations so users get it from nearby.
| Element | Function |
|---|---|
| Distributed servers | Many locations worldwide |
| Cached content | Copies stored close to users |
| Nearby delivery | Content loads from a close server |
| Origin offload | Reduces load on the source |
The CDN stores copies, or caches, of its customers content on servers distributed worldwide, so that a user request is served from a nearby server holding a copy, rather than from the distant origin, making it fast. This also offloads work from the origin, since the CDN serves the content, reducing the load on the customer own servers, improving reliability and reducing their costs. The distributed caching, serving content from close to users, is the core mechanism, making content fast worldwide and reducing the burden on the origin, which is the value the CDN provides to the online businesses and services that use it to make their content fast and their infrastructure resilient.
Beyond Speed to Security and More
Content delivery networks have expanded beyond speed into security and other services, leveraging their position as infrastructure between users and their customers content. Because the CDN sits between users and the origin, handling the traffic, it is well positioned to provide security, protecting against attacks that flood or target websites, and other services that operate on the traffic flowing through.
The CDN can absorb and filter attacks, protecting its customers from traffic floods and other threats, since it handles the traffic at its distributed edge, and it can provide additional services, from security to performance optimization to computing at the edge, close to users. This expansion, from speed to security and beyond, deepens the CDN role as infrastructure, providing more of what online businesses need and increasing its value. The position between users and content, handling the traffic globally, makes the CDN a natural place to provide security and other services, expanding it from a speed provider into broader infrastructure for the internet, which is a major growth path, leveraging the distributed network to offer more than speed, from protection against attacks to computing at the edge, deepening the CDN role in the infrastructure of the internet.
The Infrastructure Position
Content delivery networks occupy a valuable infrastructure position, providing essential speed, reliability, and increasingly security to the online businesses and services that depend on them, which is a durable and important role. The internet depends on CDNs to make content fast and resilient worldwide, so they are essential infrastructure, serving a fundamental need.
The position is defensible, since building a global network of servers and the expertise to operate it is difficult and capital intensive, and the CDN becomes embedded in its customers infrastructure, handling their traffic and providing services they depend on. The scale of a large CDN, with its global network and the traffic it handles, provides advantages and barriers, since matching it requires enormous investment. This makes the leading CDNs valuable, defensible infrastructure businesses, essential to the fast, reliable, secure internet, embedded in the operations of the online businesses that depend on them. The infrastructure position, providing an essential service through a hard to replicate global network, underpins the durability and value of the CDN business, which quietly powers much of the fast internet as essential infrastructure that online businesses depend on and cannot easily replace.
The Bottom Line
Content delivery networks store copies of content in many locations worldwide so users get it from nearby, making the internet faster and reducing the load on their customers origin servers, selling speed and reliability as infrastructure to the online world. They work by caching content on distributed servers and serving it from close to users, and they have expanded beyond speed into security and other services, leveraging their position between users and content to protect against attacks and provide more. Content delivery networks occupy a valuable, defensible infrastructure position, essential to the fast, reliable, secure internet, protected by the difficulty of building a global network and their embedding in customers infrastructure, making them a durable and important business that quietly powers much of the internet.