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Content delivery networks (CDNs) provide many useful benefits for end users including both decreased downtime and increased network capacity. IT services dynamically monitor CDNs, diverting traffic and lowering companies’ network costs. Strategic placement of servers guarantees constant availability to all of a company’s end users and increases productivity for all.

A CDN consists of servers that contain copied content placed at a variety of network nodes. Content is delivered by a CDN over both TCP and UDP connections. The throughput of TCP over a network is affected by both packet loss and latency, so IT professionals place servers as close to the edge networks as possible. In essence, by placing the content closer to the end user, CDNs ensure faster delivery. End users even in remote areas will experience better streaming with fewer network surges with a high-performing CDN.

By placing servers strategically, IT professionals can squeeze much more capacity than is provided by the network backbone. By increasing capacity, the CDN will allow many more users to be on the network concurrently. By redirecting traffic to edge servers, IT professionals free up capacity and lower network costs. Professionals also free up loads on both public and private peers and interconnects.

A CDN allows for a dynamic distribution of assets. The network can route connections to redundant edge, core and fallback servers to account for changes in server availability. When networks experience large power or hardware outages, CDNs can still deliver 100% availability to end users.

CDN providers should deliver important server statistics to their clients. For instance, clients will want to know about real-time load, exact viewing choices and active regions so they will know which of their assets are more popular. Usage logs will no longer be available to customers onsite because the client’s connections are served by edge servers rather than the contact source.

Many businesses have lived with poor network performance for far too long. By upgrading to a CDN, businesses will spend less time waiting on overwhelmed networks and more time on business activities. A trusted IT company, such as Dell IT Services, will explain CDNs and their benefits to business owners and will offer the service at a reasonable cost.