CDN
Content Delivery Network
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
A CDN is a network of servers spread around the world that store copies of your files. When someone in Tokyo visits your site, they get images from a CDN server in Tokyo — not from your server in Virginia. Everything loads blazing fast because it's coming from nearby. Vercel and Cloudflare are CDNs.
Real Talk
A Content Delivery Network is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers that cache and serve content from the location closest to the end user. CDNs reduce latency, offload origin server traffic, improve availability, and protect against DDoS. They cache static assets, and modern CDNs also support dynamic content and edge computing.
When You'll Hear This
"Put the assets behind a CDN so global users get fast load times." / "The CDN serves 95% of our traffic — the origin server barely sweats."
Related Terms
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is how wide your internet pipe is — how much data can flow through per second. A narrow pipe means slow speeds, a wide pipe means fast speeds.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare is like a superhero shield in front of your website.
CloudFront
CloudFront is AWS's CDN — it copies your files to data centers all over the world so users get content from a server near them instead of one far away.
Edge Computing
Your server is in Virginia. Your user is in Tokyo. Every request travels 10,000 km and back.
Latency
Latency is the delay before data starts moving — the time it takes for a request to go from your device to the server and back.
Static Hosting
Static hosting is when you serve pre-built HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files directly — no server-side logic, no database queries per request.