A Content Delivery Network is a system of distributed servers (network) that delivers web pages and other web content to a user based on the user's geographic location, the origin of the web page, and a content delivery server.

The purpose of a CDN is to establish higher quality network connections.

CDNs do this by providing efficient routes between their own servers that can quickly get users to their destination. If it is faster and/or cheaper, they can also send a copy of the destination of that website to another server.

This concept and type of service is not new, but is becoming increasingly popular as the Internet grows.

Websites contract with and pay for a CDN service, which then pays an ISP to use their servers for their data.

An example of CDNs are Google's Hosted Libraries. — https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/#jquery

Google hosts these libraries, so your users can load them on your site much faster than if you host them yourself.

There is a chance that the user's browser will even store a cached version of a previous page visit, making the process even faster. If you are not familiar with the term 'cache', don't worry, we will will cover that in future videos.

As a user, you probably use CDNs all the time without even realizing it.

As a developer, you may want to use CDNs like Google Libraries to make your page load faster.

As a business, a CDN is useful if you want your product or website to reach users more efficiently across the greater whole of your network and the Internet as a whole.

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