Using a content delivery network

A content delivery network (CDN) stores your Web site data within different points on a network and can deliver that data to Web site visitors with a decreased amount of bandwidth. A CDN can choose to deliver this data from the nearest geographical location, making the transfer faster. Because of this, visitors don’t access the data from the same place at the same time, which lightens the load on your server significantly.

To use a CDN, you need to sign up for a service that provides a network
and a series of computers to store and serve your data on your Web site.
The CDN can include items like images and CSS, JavaScript, and media files.
Using a CDN reduces the load on your server because the files are delivered
through the CDN, not through your Web server. This is especially helpful if
you use a significant amount of bandwidth on your current hosting account.

CDN services are relatively inexpensive, particularly if you don’t have a lot of media files, images, and data to store on their servers. A few popular CDN providers include

✦ Amazon Web Services: http://aws.amazon.com
✦ Akamai: www.akamai.com