Media Delivery
All media uploaded in Crystallize is automatically transcoded and made available on our global content delivery network (CDN). Images are scaled and converted to modern formats like AVIF and WebP, and videos are transcoded to streaming formats.
Advantages of CDNs
A CDN allows for the quick transfer of assets needed for loading Internet content including HTML pages, javascript files, stylesheets, images, and videos. The popularity of CDN services continues to grow, and today the majority of web traffic is served through CDNs, including traffic from major sites like Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon.
A properly configured CDN may also help protect websites against some common malicious attacks, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks.
Differences between CDNs and Web Hosting
- Web hosting is used to host your website on a server and let users access it over the internet. A CDN is about speeding up the access/delivery of your website's assets to those users.
- Traditional web hosting would deliver 100% of your content to the user. If they are located across the world, the user must wait for the data to be retrieved from where your web server is located. A CDN takes a majority of your static and dynamic content and serves it from across the globe, decreasing download times.
- Web hosting normally refers to one server. A CDN refers to a global network of edge servers that distributes your content from a multi-host environment.
How does a CDN protect data?
Information security is an integral part of a CDN. A CDN can keep a site secured with fresh TLS/SSL certificates, which will ensure a high standard of authentication, encryption, and integrity. Investigate the security concerns surrounding CDNs and explore what can be done to securely deliver content.
