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Choosing the right type of CDN is very important because it will affect the way in which content is delivered to those who access your website.
Before we get into the types of CDN that you can choose from, it’s best if we went over what CDN is and what is accomplishes, just so everyone is on the same page. CDN servers help websites deliver their data to people all over the world.
Normally this would be problematic because latency needs to be taken into consideration. But with CDN, that problem just vanishes. For those that aren’t familiar with it, CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. Its name doesn’t leave too much room for interpretation when it comes to meaning, which is neat because those inquiring can easily get a simple answer about what it is.
But now that we’ve looked at what it is, it’s important to also know what kinds of CDN there are and what the differences between the two are as well before we can look at any price comparison.
The main types of servers are Push CDN and Pull CDN. Both have their distinct characteristic and depending on what your intentions are with the website as well as the kind of traffic you are able to pull in on a regular basis, one might be better than the other in your specific situation. In a universal manner there’s no “better one” because they have different target audiences. Let’s dive a little deeper and see what these two are all about.
Push CDN
This one is called Push because you are the one that has top Push their content onto the new server. The information from your website, from your main server is uploaded to the provider’s servers by you, manually. This mean a bit more work but the results are worth it because you get to control a lot of other options regarding the what, who, when and where that goes into the delivery of your website information.
Pull CDN
This one is called Pull because it automatically pulls data from your server. It gets rid of some extra work for you but it also stripes away a lot of your decision making options in the process, and you’ll just have to like the settings that the server makes for you. Here, you don’t have to upload anything by yourself. The server will pull the information whenever it is needed by someone checking out your website and deliver it to them accordingly.
If you have a huge website where numbers fly off the screen and the traffic is insane, you will want to look a bit more into Pull because it comes with regular refreshes that allow the content to be delivered to masses and always be available. For the little guys, try Push. You don’t have quite the same number of people checking out the website just yet, so you won’t need a refresh every so often. You can just upload the information and not have worry about it for the longest time.
