Without realizing it, most consumers enjoy the services of Content Delivery Networks (CDN) each day, whether they’re purchasing items online or reading about the latest events on their favorite news sites. But CDNs aren’t limited to large businesses. Working through cloud hosting providers, businesses of all sizes can access the many customer service benefits of a CDN.

What is a Content Delivery Network?

Also known as a Content Distribution Network, a CDN makes a site’s content available in a variety of data centers, located in multiple locations. This has several benefits to both website owners and their customers. The most immediate benefit is that a customer is directed to the server closest to his or her house. So, for example, a customer visiting a site in Michigan won’t have to go all the way to a business’s data center in California or even another country to access information.

Another benefit of CDN is added protection against a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack. In the event such an attack occurs, a distributed system can absorb some of the traffic, preventing an outage.

Can It Help You?

A CDN provides an increase in speed and reliability for a business’s website visitors, but it isn’t a necessity for every site. For small, growing sites whose visitors are mostly local, a CDN wouldn’t be beneficial. If your business fits that description, it might be an idea worth revisiting later, once you’ve expanded to a more global audience.

CDNs are also popular for high-traffic sites that might experience outages due to server load. The distributed network can absorb some of that load, ensuring sites stay functional even during the busiest days of the year.

With more cloud service providers offering CDN like Amazon CloudFront as an option, for many businesses it could be a more affordable option than they realize. The safety and reliability it provides can be a big plus for SMBs.