Why do with one array, only, of the surrogate servers on the cloud? The internet is in no lack of those. This is what Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) basically are. Surrogate servers located across different data centers in different regions of the world. To keep your website less clogged. However, providers of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) vary in service. Some will perform better in China, some in US, some in Australia. Some will include one feature, but not the other. And you’ll want to be on the right cloud at the right time.
CDNs are known to provide a more secure network, reduced loading time of your page, manageable traffic, maximum availability, and so on. An irreplaceable tool that will improve the entire technological infrastructure that backs up your business. Whether you are in e-commerce business, or your website is supposed to deliver various audio, video rich content. Why trust it with one CDN provider only?
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Diversification, diversification
CloudClimate company performed a CDN cloud test, recently. The graphs below show the average times for 10 requests CloudClimate made to each CDN provider. The first graphs shows time results from all over the world, the second shows results from US only.
As obvious, the results vary depending on CDN providers, and they also vary depending on different geographical regions. What if you could hop from one CDN provider to another, at all times? Redirecting your user’s requests to the optimal content source based on your business needs. This is known as Multiple Content Delivery Network, or multi-CDN. Such diversification of your CDN providers is known to be less risky. And you can easily balance availability and performance of your website by loading various servers on the cloud, differently.
Using multiple CDNs is smarter than using one CDN because:
- CDN providers perform differently in different geographical regions
- Not all CDN providers are reliable as others
- Not all CDN providers include same features and strategies as others
- You don’t need to switch CDN providers as this process becomes automated
- It’s the next big thing in e-commerce
Direct Advantages of using Multi-CDN
1. You can branch out to new regions, new markets
By using different locations of the whole network of servers located at different data centers, you can reach all web users promptly. Regardless of their geographical location. Perhaps, start a new market in China, US? By always switching to a better performing CDN, you can manage more growth to your business, more users, more content to deliver.
2. You don’t need to hold back your business
You don’t need to be that cautious while adding rich multimedia to your website while using multi-CDNs. You can keep your design both attractive and instantly available to your customers. By orchestrating different CDN providers, you will be able to manage all traffic peaks. Also, to beat off bandwidth pressures and all the memory-intensive content.
3. You’ll gain more revenue due to a better performance
That speed affects conversion rates is a well known fact. (If this doesn’t ring a bell, please read one of our older posts. In fact, an advantage of 250 milliseconds of a page load time, according to recent research, is what keeps your customer from going to your competitor. Take an example of a giant such as Amazon. The increased revenue was by 1% for every 100ms of improvement to their page load time. Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a number one advice when it comes to best practices in overhauling your site speed. Using multiple Content Delivery Networks (multi-CDN) is even better.
4. Your cloud will never crash
A downtime to a website is a severe damage to an e-commerce business. 1 out of 4 customers will leave, never to come back again. The rest are highly unlikely to trust you again. And many will share their bad experience with other users, online. If you still trust a single cloud provider with your CDN, you are to face an outage at a certain point. For a shorter while, or longer. It will happen, and don’t think that the most resilient providers are excluded. The risk is to be disregarded only if you choose two or more CDN providers to operate with.
5. You gain more control of your business
By orchestrating the multiple CDN providers, you can set exact criteria, e.g. time of the day, to ensure that your customer always finds the content he seeks. And faster. You don’t lose important data by choosing one provider over the other. Multi-CDNs automatically switch to which ever CDN provider enables the best possible performance for your website at any given time/place.
