Internet is driven by massive assortment of data centers and networks It is also being used to enable connectivity between smart devices and helping organizations reach out to their potential customers in more efficient manner than ever.

Faster Content Delivery- A Vital Issue

Multitude of requests for variety of content are handled every moment by web servers that are positioned in datacenters. It is the location of web server and its relative distance from end user that determines the speed and latency of the content delivery. Web administrators are consistently engaged in finding ways to accelerate content delivery to end users for enhanced browsing experience and low latency.

The huge number of requests that are being handled by a single server is also an important factor that impacts website performance as well as speed of content delivery. This calls for balancing the overall burden of requests on server infrastructure.

Thanks to extensive and deep penetration of internet enabled devices across global geographies, it is now easier than ever before to cover different target locations for reaching customers according to market segmentation.

There are several ways to server customer segments located in diverse geographical locations including cloud, geo-located hosting, and Content Delivery Networks. Each of these options has potential of reaching out efficiently to customers situated at multitude of locations.

One must understand significance and purpose of these three basic approaches by performing comparative analysis based on multiple parameters.

Cloud Hosting

There are no two opinions about flexibility and scalability offered by cloud hosting while addressing challenges of fluctuating demands. These attributes of cloud contribute to its growing acceptance by organizations that need to manage growth in number of visitors and sudden traffic spikes.

There is a common understanding that cloud hosting may offer superior efficiency of reaching out to remotely located customer segments. We need to find validity of this common belief by understanding how local clouds operate.

Cloud hosing involves servers, located in particular geographical position. Imagine that your cloud’s servers are positioned in North America, then your customer who is in India can be reached faster by a geo-located server based in India rather than the cloud with its server based in North America. Cloud is certainly a better option as far as performance is concerned.

However, for a faster reach with low latency one must prefer a geo-located server than cloud. Therefore assessment of objectives is essential while choosing cloud server. It is ideal to choose cloud for power but if your objective is to mitigate latency then geo-located server can prove to be a better choice.

Content Delivery Network - Focused and Precise

In the modern age of smart devices and growing focus of organizations to penetrate globally dispersed customer segments, Content Delivery Networks are proving to be effective solutions. These are currently accounting for much larger share of dissemination of content across large number of networks and websites throughout the world.

Presence of rich content in diverse spectrum of formats including media files, images, live streaming, documents, and downloadable software needs highly efficient and expansive CDN solutions. CDNs facilitate network infrastructure and boost performance of websites. These are positioned at datacenters and offer a plethora of advantages to users.

Content Delivery Network refers to an integrated and well-knit system of servers positioned at several locations for handling high traffic volumes and delivering content to users that are located in various parts of regions.

CDN leverages data replication from main server to deliver the same to multiple servers at different locations. These high performance networks are capable of estimating the nearest edge server to user and arrange for the requested content from that particular server to mitigate latency. CDNs implement data dispersion by precisely estimating the shortest available route between the edge server and end user based on vital factors including availability, proximity, latency, and speed to name a few

Content Delivery Network keep copies of content in several Points of Presence (POPs) across global locations. These copies of content are delivered by determining the closest CDN POP in relation to the end user. CDNs can also accelerate speed of delivery due to its following features:

   - Instant delivery

   - Wide area coverage

   - Prompt file loading

   - Superior availability

   - Highly scalable

Geo-Located Server Hosting for Accelerated Content Delivery

One of the most tried and tested approach to accelerate content delivery is by positioning multiple servers at multiple locations across wide geographical area. This strategy is effective in reducing latency as well as accelerating page load speed.

It is a well understood fact that latency is the effect of distance travelled by data from the origin server to the end user. One must always follow the 80/20 principle to place the servers closer to customers that are giving you more business. It is found that 20 percent of customers contribute to 80 percent business. Geo-located server hosting enables faster delivery of content by minimizing distance between your clients and server for greater speed.

According to Google experts, physical proximity of servers in relation with the intended audience and should often be in close proximity of users. This factor can boost search engine visibility of your site with better ranking.

It is always more feasible to position servers near target audience than implementing cloud or CDN solutions. If you are able to choose a web hosting service provider that owns and operates data centers in areas of interest to your business, then you will be able to harvest amazing benefits of geo-located server hosting. Therefore before selecting a web host you need to find out the presence of data centers where the chunk of your customers is located.

One needs to deeply analyze requirements and physical locations of potential and existing customers to determine what kind of solution can fit the bill. Budgetary constraints can also influence decision to adopt cloud or CDN solutions.

However, if the financial limitations are taken care of both CDN and cloud based approaches are highly promising and can certainly help content reach faster with low latency.

CDN is exclusively designed for boosting content delivery to target locations. You need to confirm availability of CDN locations in relation with geographical locations of your client base.

Interesting Topics To Read:-

Cloud Content Delivery Network

How Can CDN Help You Improve Website Performance?