CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. It’s a method of delivering content to your users by hosting it on multiple servers positioned around the globe. Visitors get faster access to content and resources as they are directed to a server that is geographically close to them.

A CDN can be run in-house but more often it is handled by a large third-party hosting company. Good examples of CDN providers are Amazon or Edgecast. The disadvantage of CDNs is one of latency as content takes time to spread across the network. Without proper application design that takes this into consideration users can be requesting content that is not yet downloadable in their region