Eventually, it is this underlying Content Delivery Network that is responsible for delivering the images to the users. Some of the leading ones are AWS CloudFront, Akamai, and Fastly.Īlmost all good image CDNs would offer one of these leading CDN providers as a part of their service. They have their network spread across hundreds of countries, already tuned for fast load times. There are already massive, well-performing general content delivery networks out there. This is done using the Content Delivery Networks we talked about earlier. The Deliveryĭelivery means how does an image actually gets to the user's device and how quickly we can get it there. Let's look at different parts of the process to understand how are image CDNs built. They are not an entirely different content delivery network they are built on top of existing ones with software enhancements required for image optimization. This is the most important thing to understand about all the image CDNs out there. Therefore, we need to have a CDN tuned for image delivery.Īn image CDN is a regular content delivery network topped with a set of software enhancements to enhance the underlying CDNs functionality for optimizing and transforming images in real-time, thereby making it more suitable for image delivery. You need to consider the image format, image dimensions, image compression, aspect ratio, and a lot more, while balancing the image's visual quality. Images present a slightly complicated case when it comes to delivering the perfect variation on each device using a CDN. You can access it from here - Content Delivery Network - A Beginner's Guide. With a CDN the geographical distance, and hence the load time, decreases If you want to read more about how a general CDN works, we have written a separate guide that gives you a gentle introduction to the same. Shorter distance, super fast load time, happier users, and more sales for you. So now, if users sitting in California access your website, instead of downloading the content from North Virginia, they can get it from one of the servers of the CDN, a few miles from their location. While your server sits in one location, a CDN consists of globally distributed servers that can store your website's content (or commonly referred to as "cache" your website's content) and deliver it to your users. This is where a Content Delivery Network comes into the picture. Users geographically far away from the origin server experience slow load time Your users get frustrated because of the slow website and drop off without converting to a paid customer. And, the farther they are, the longer it would take for the content to get transferred from your server to their devices. And maybe even in other countries, which means that they could be a few thousand miles away from your server. So, when a user accesses your website, everything that loads on that website comes from this server in North Virginia.īut, your users access it from across all of the United States. Let's understand how it works with an example.Ĭonsider that you run an e-commerce store in the US hosted on a server located in a city on the US east coast, let's say, North Virginia. What is a Content Delivery Network (CDN), in generalĪ Content Delivery Network forms the basis of what we will cover in the rest of this guide. We take a quick look at a regular content delivery network (CDN) and then gradually move on to the specifics of an image CDN. ![]() Having this understanding would enable you to map your requirements to what an image CDN offers. ![]() This guide not only covers the basics but also includes why a particular feature is essential for an image CDN. ![]() Or you are a bit further down the line - trying to evaluate what an image CDN should do or understanding the essential features of an image CDN that can help you with faster page load time, better image delivery, improved SEO, and simpler integration. If you are reading this guide, you are probably trying to learn more about an image CDN, and how does it work.
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