An Overview of the Content Delivery Network (CDN) in 2018

Do you know any term which spans altered forms of content delivery services? Content Delivery Network (CDN) is the kind of term. It includes software downloads, videos streaming and transparent caching. Users in recent want to utilize a CDN. Why? When one of the cakewalk’s websites scrambles, means to test speed. CDN takes off loads from the server and speeds up the site’s contents to visitors.

Everything we deliver in Voidcoders, to make your site better. In that systematic way, today we are going to share our research on CDN. In this article, you will introduce yourself to CDN, how it works, CDN providers and speed test. In the end, you can boost your expectation from CDN speed test.

So let’s have an overview of CDN step by step.

 

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

What is CDN? On starting, we have talked a little about it. Now, Voidcoders offers you a proper discussion.

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. These are known as POPs (Points of Presence) also. These gather in hosting servers as a network located around the globe. Their forms have designed to cloud and copy the WordPress site stuff. Such dynamic content forms are CSS, JavaScript, images and video streams.

Also, the services which accelerate CDN on the top of the user’s choice list are:

• Multi-CDN switching and analytics
• Web and mobile content acceleration
• Licensed or managed CDN
• Load balancing
• Cloud intelligence

With above in mind, users should know how do CDN provides services. Next level is for the beginners.

 

How Does It Work?

You should not be confused about CDN and your WP host server. One can not replace by another and both have variety in service. But how CDN works?

Suppose you have chosen Texas, USA. Thus your physical data center location is at Council Bluffs, Lowa. People are from Australia visit your site daily. But acute data loading time occurs due to a further distance. This latency problem involves the transmission of information over a network.

From a twitter statistics, 40% of visitors abandon a site for latency. The newbies must have overwhelmed of how CDN works.

Don’t worry because it is easy to implement with the following steps:

1st step

• CDN Enabler and WP Rocket are such free CDN integrate plugin. These plugins can connect your website assets to the CDN.
• Take off your hands because an automatic system will link up your contents.

2nd step

• Select a CDN provider like Cache Enabler Subscribe to their service.
• With their calculator, calculate your data charges. Hope the little cost paid per month should not bother you much.

3rd step

• After connecting your site with CDN, different CDN hosts are regulating your contents. Generally, two types of technologies route users. One of them is IP Anycast and is geolocation routing.
• The automatic processor detects a user request’s location. After that routes to the nearest POP.

Choosing a strategic server for WordPress site is very important. Since a CDN helps to distribute media while website loading. For instance, Content Delivery Network named as Content Distribution Network.

 

The Popular Content Delivery Network Providers

Sometimes it is very confusing to select one CDN providers from the list. As like plugins, there are both free and paid CDN providers.

• Cloudflare
• CDN77
• StackPath
• Fastly
• Amazon CloudFront
• KeyCDN
• Akamai and much more

Pick out one from above third-party Content Delivery Network providers list.

 

How to Install CDN in WordPress?

CDN Enabler plugin is a lightweight plugin. Lookout the install process and configure it to link up your resources to Content Delivery Network.

• Have a look at how to install plugins and themes.
• At first, generate a pull area in the KeyCDN Dashboard.
• Install the CDN Enabler plugin. Activate and press on settings.
• Enter the CDN URL in the CDN Enabler Settings.
• Save the settings. Ensure that your resources are charging from the CDN.

• N.B.: Go to General>> Use an HTTPS URL for CDN. For example, https://www.yourdomain.com/path/to/blog. If it’s not from the root directory, change it as follows-

 

• Now check CDN Enabler Setting>> Included Directories.

 

• Purge CDN Cache from CDN Dashboard.

 

Will You Benefit with CDN?

It’s the most common question among customers. Even you also can ask that “why do I need CDN?”

Time and tide wait for none. If you want to progress in open source business, CDN is a must. Don’t only care about our words, here a quick stats for your concern.

• 7% fall in conversions due to A-1 delay in contact response. [source: Kissmetrics]
• Mobile responsiveness is vital in recent because 53% searches ensue through Google. [source: DoubleClick]
• BBC has stated that they lose 10% users every second. When? In that case of lower speed in page loading. [Source: Creative Bloq]

Below approaches, a CDN can make to improve your website performance.

 

High Convenience and Scalability

Web traffic has routed due to replicate media and contents. CDN has built with high convenience and scalability. No need to worry about the small shared host. Content Delivery Network keeps your site safe from crashing down.

 

Speed an SEO Ranking

Site speed has become a ranking factor in Google. The more speedy your site, the more it ranks on search engine results. It is not a secret now that how much Google ranking and side speed are correlated. Hence, a CDN helps to increase the crawl rate through images to relate in Google Image Search.

Ensure Security

The origin shields or Web Application Firewall (WAF) are now pre-built in CDNs. Many CDN providers allow implementing WAF around sites. Sucuri is that kind of Web Application Firewall.

How will this help you? Let’s check out the answers.

• Different protocols such as  SYN/ACK, UDP and ICMP and DNS Amplification might damage without a firewall. WAF mitigates DDoS attacks on those protocols.

• Hide your Original IP Address.
• Reduce bounce rate and increase traffic.
• Provide secure tokens with an expiration link to access the content.

Bandwidth Saved

 

The most exciting thing in CDN is it offloads CPU and resources from your origin server. That saves your host from getting overwhelmed. How much will it benefit you have no idea. Content Delivery Network reduces bandwidth costs.

Suppose, Cloudflare is hosting a site. The offload percentage falls to 69% of the bandwidth appeals.

 

Boost Up Site Performance

One of the biggest reasons to choose CDN is this one. Users prefer CDNs because of they correlate servers with the higher conversion rate, high traffic and faster loading of the site. The enormous inclusion of those benefits boost up site performance. The following methods of CDN must help to improve your website.

 

• TTFB With CDN

When CDN doesn’t exist on a site, see what happen.

Again we have enabled a CDN and tested the site. This time the sum of loading time has dropped down to 788 ms. Also, the TTFB is now 37 ms! The whole test and CDN POP placed in Stockholm.

Cloudflare TTFB testing results in a bit higher TTFB. The additional overhead and being a proxy service running can effect as a lower to TTFB.

 

• Reduces TTFB

We have already covered that how a CDN decrease latency. With above in mind, CDN measures TTFB in a good mood by the browser.

 

• Enormous Savings with GZIP Compression

A software application uses for compression and decompression is GZIP. In short, GZIP is a file format includes HTML, JS and all files. WordPress CDNs correspondingly utilize GZIP. GZIP is a server-side app. A result said that 70% reductions due to compression of a file are possible. This impacts on saving 64.59% on just one folder. GZIP Compression is such a tool, compatible for all of your assets.

 

• Brotli Accelerate Compression

Another compression algorithm which can reduce folders up to 26%. Brotli’s existed solutions include GZIP. Brotli has added a rapid growing adoption rate developed by Google. So guess what? Google is now advertising with Brotli’s compression display.

 

• HTTP/2

HTTP/2. The most popular and utilizing feature CDN has to speed up all assets. Merely, HTTP/2 needs only HTTPS for browser support. In any way, it has empowered CDN in various ways alike-

• Better multiplexing
• Parallelism
• The ALPN extension
• Server push and
• HPACK compression with Huffman encoding

 

Want to Test CDN Speed?

Earlier on, we have discussed on CDN details. This time, instead of talk over CDN benefits, showing you some tests below. Each CDN has tested at the changed location by Pingdom.

Without CDN

 

	San Jose, California, USA	Dallas, Texas, USA	Melbourne, Australia	Stockholm, Sweden
Performance grade	A 97	A 97	A 97	A 97
Load time	736 ms	518 ms	2.17 s	1.51 s
Faster than	93%	97%	67%	80%
Page size	346.9 KB	346.9 KB	346.9 KB	346.9 KB
Requests	31	31	31	31
Tested from	San Jose, USA	Dallas, USA	Melbourne, Australia	Stockholm, Sweden

(Source: Pingdom)

 

With CDN

 

	San Jose, California, USA	Dallas, Texas, USA	Melbourne, Australia	Stockholm, Sweden
Performance grade	A 100	A 100	A 100	A 100
Load time	493 ms	476 ms	994 ms	684 ms
Faster than	97%	97%	89%	94%
Page size	350.6 KB	350.6 KB	350.6 KB	350.6 KB
Requests	31	31	31	31
Tested from	San Jose	Dallas	Melbourne	Stockholm

(Source: Pingdom)

 

CDN Test Results

The sum of each test results to understand how much CDN affects your WordPress site loading time.

Isn’t it a requirement for your site to decrease loading times? Of course, yes.

Sum It Up

Hope you have enjoyed this article and almost craving to add this in WP site. WordPress CDN ensures to load your site media around the globe. You may have dramatic experience with its benefits. Best SEO plugins can help to a higher ranking. But WP Content Network Delivery ensure both higher ranking and fast page loading.

We are optimistic in your using of WordPress CDN. Don’t you want to share experiences with other customers? Of course, you do. So share your practices below the comment section.