CDN services in Africa
We might not be aware of it, but we interact with content delivery networks (CDN) daily when we engage with online content. Whether you are reading an article on a news site, doing online shopping, catching up on social media feeds, watching videos on YouTube, or binge-watching a series on Netflix – there are CDNs behind the delivery of such content. CDN services in Africa are getting very important.
CDNs are specifically designed to solve network latency, which is the delay often experienced when loading a web page until the content finally appears on your device screen. The delay can be affected by several factors, but the duration will always be impacted by the actual physical distance between the website’s hosting server and the person trying to access the content. Given Africa’s digital divide and low population of internet penetration, CDN options used to be located in continents with high internet usage. However, this has changed with a boost in internet usage in Africa with the introduction of accessible mobile devices and expanded mobile networks. This, in turn, has catapulted CDN providers into recognizing the opportunities that exist for CDN networks in Africa.
How does a CDN work?
To shorten the distance between a website visitor and the site’s server, a CDN stores cached versions of content in different locations known as points of presence, or POPs. Individual POPs contain several caching servers responsible for delivering content to visitors in the proximity of the POP. In a nutshell, a CDN stores your content in different locations at the same time to ensure that users have quick access to it. For example, if someone in the US were to access your website in South Africa, it would be done through a local US POP instead of the request and your site responses having to travel all the way between the continents. The better your content loading speeds are, the greater your User Experience (UX) will be, and your network resource utilization will also be more effective.
How a CDN typically works:
- Content providers, such as e-commerce vendors or media companies, pay CDN operators for delivering content to their end-users (audience).
- A CDN will pay ISPs, network operators, and carriers for the hosting servers located in their data centers.
- Important content will be distributed to several global data centers for the content to be closer to end-users, which will ensure faster download of the content.
- Server optimization according to content type allows for the content to reach the end-user in the most effective manner.
What are the benefits of a CDN?
CDNs can help with several IT tasks, such as:
- Page load speed improvement
- Sustained high traffic loads
- Spammers, bots, and scrapers can be blocked
- Localized coverage
- Lower bandwidth consumption
- Website protection from DDoS attacks
- Secure applications
- Balancing loads between multiple servers
AFR-IX backbone and data center services
Direct connectivity to more than 300 million users in Africa.
- More than 50 POPs inter-connected to the AFR-IX global private backbone, covering EU, LATAM, and North America.
- 140ms round-trip latency to North America from Africa.
- Redundant power and connectivity in POPs
- Regional and local support is provided by a highly qualified network team that includes Cisco certified engineers.
- Trusted network provider in Africa for Standard Chartered Bank, Telefonica, Orange, IMF, United Nations, Agence France-Presse, Ecobank, and US Department of State.
- Full Cisco CDN backbone network.
- All services under one simplified contract process.
AFR-IX is excited to offer our new CDN services to Africa. Should you want more information from our reliable team of experts, contact AFR-IX telecom today.