What Is a CDN and How It Works
What a CDN actually does to a request A user in Tokyo loading a page hosted on a server in Virginia pays for that distance twice: once for the request to arrive, once for the response to come back. Fiber runs at a fixed fraction of the speed of light, and that trip alone costs on the order of 150-200ms round-trip before the origin has done any work. Add a database query and a slow hop or two, and a page that feels instant next door feels sluggish on the other side of the planet. ...