Having cloud CDN servers
Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 8:10 am
Not long ago, we launched a centralized Anycast DNS service that made DNS management on SiteGround really easy and significantly increased domain name resolution speed and redundancy for SiteGround customers compared to using local DNS servers. Our centralized DNS also laid the groundwork for another feature that’s essential for website speed and performance: our own cloud-based content delivery network called SiteGround CDN.
Why did we develop SiteGround CDN?
For the past 10 years, we have partnered with CDN providers to offer free integrated CDN as part of our hosting services. However, third-party services invariably require additional installation and configuration, which often involves managing things from separate interfaces or technical knowledge about DNS, HTTP, cookies, etc. On top of this, using third-party services can sometimes cause confusion for users or problems that are beyond our control. And at SiteGround, we have always strived to minimize the hassle as much as possible for our customers.
That's why we wanted to create our own CDN solution, to provide a simple on/off service with smart defaults and native server performance. SiteGround CDN is specifically developed for our clients to incorporate all the related services needed to get the best results:
Smart Anycast DNS to route traffic to the geographically closest CDN location.
More control over back-end hosting servers to increase redundancy and offer more out-of-the-box features.
Greater flexibility to configure things for our customers without them having to do anything.
What are the benefits of SiteGround CDN compared to a third-party service?
Cloud Native Performance
Our new CDN service is hosted entirely in the cloud – redundant, highly available, multi-region server clusters, making it possible for your content to be cached and replicated across multiple locations, and served to your website visitors with minimal latency. It works with our centralized DNS and its high-speed Anycast routing technology to direct requests from your site visitors to the nearest SiteGround CDN location. It will then serve the content from the cache on our cloud CDN (if the specific content has been cached before) or send it to your site’s hosting server to ensure near-native server performance.
Customer-specific locations with premium network
We carefully analyzed the top aggregated sources of website traffic to our servers and came up with the following list of locations that are currently feeding our CDN: Tokyo (Japan), Singapore, Sydney (Australia), Warsaw (Poland), Hamina (Finland), London (England), Frankfurt (Germany), Eemshaven (Netherlands), Council Bluffs (Iowa, US), Moncks Corner (South Carolina, US), The Dalles (Oregon, US), Los Angeles (California, North America).
at the above locations gives us a huge advantage in terms of network performance. The fact that we have network control of both the CDN layer, as well as your website hosting server, makes communication between them incredibly fast. By using internal paths between the servers, we are eliminating any delays and latencies that can be seen with third-party CDN providers that use the public network to communicate with your site's hosting server. In short, this ensures the fastest private network between our CDN locations and our shared hosting servers, resulting in faster website loading speeds for our customers.
No configuration and simple administration
Thanks to the fact that every layer of our system, from the hosting environment, to the website admin panel, to the centralized DNS, is built in-house, we can offer our clients an easy and convenient way to add a CDN layer to their websites with literally one click. It also allows us to implement the CDN functionalities you need and make them available in an easy-to-use interface right within SiteGround's website admin interface - Site Tools.
Everything from configuring SiteGround CDN to enabling/disabling a certain feature is handled automatically in our backend. All you have left to do is click a few simple buttons in Site Tools -> Speed -> CDN section of your site. This way we are saving you a lot of annoying actions:
No external CDN control panels – you don’t need to log in anywhere lebanon whatsapp number data except your Site Tools.
There is no need to change and use external nameservers – everything happens within our central DNS records.
There is no need to create additional DNS records for the www prefix version of your domains - we will route absolutely everything through our CDN service, regardless of whether your site opens with the WWW or non-WWW version of your domain.
No additional HTTP configuration: No specific cookie settings, no need to implement anything in your application. Simply click the “Activate” button and your content will be served from the SiteGround CDN location closest to your site visitors.
SiteGround CDN Beta Features
After successfully passing our detailed internal tests, SiteGround CDN Beta is now available for testing. Currently, SiteGround customers can enable it for their websites' primary domain names with a single click, absolutely free of charge. Here's a quick overview of the features that are currently available to all users who decide to use SiteGround Cloud CDN in Beta:
Access all available CDN locations we currently offer.
Static and dynamic caching without additional configuration - Third-party CDN services typically only cache and serve static content by default (website images, CSS, Javascript, etc.). With SiteGround Cloud CDN, you can choose to cache both your site's static and dynamic content with a single click. This way, our CDN will instantly serve cached copies of your site's dynamically generated pages by default, instead of just static content.
Why did we develop SiteGround CDN?
For the past 10 years, we have partnered with CDN providers to offer free integrated CDN as part of our hosting services. However, third-party services invariably require additional installation and configuration, which often involves managing things from separate interfaces or technical knowledge about DNS, HTTP, cookies, etc. On top of this, using third-party services can sometimes cause confusion for users or problems that are beyond our control. And at SiteGround, we have always strived to minimize the hassle as much as possible for our customers.
That's why we wanted to create our own CDN solution, to provide a simple on/off service with smart defaults and native server performance. SiteGround CDN is specifically developed for our clients to incorporate all the related services needed to get the best results:
Smart Anycast DNS to route traffic to the geographically closest CDN location.
More control over back-end hosting servers to increase redundancy and offer more out-of-the-box features.
Greater flexibility to configure things for our customers without them having to do anything.
What are the benefits of SiteGround CDN compared to a third-party service?
Cloud Native Performance
Our new CDN service is hosted entirely in the cloud – redundant, highly available, multi-region server clusters, making it possible for your content to be cached and replicated across multiple locations, and served to your website visitors with minimal latency. It works with our centralized DNS and its high-speed Anycast routing technology to direct requests from your site visitors to the nearest SiteGround CDN location. It will then serve the content from the cache on our cloud CDN (if the specific content has been cached before) or send it to your site’s hosting server to ensure near-native server performance.
Customer-specific locations with premium network
We carefully analyzed the top aggregated sources of website traffic to our servers and came up with the following list of locations that are currently feeding our CDN: Tokyo (Japan), Singapore, Sydney (Australia), Warsaw (Poland), Hamina (Finland), London (England), Frankfurt (Germany), Eemshaven (Netherlands), Council Bluffs (Iowa, US), Moncks Corner (South Carolina, US), The Dalles (Oregon, US), Los Angeles (California, North America).
at the above locations gives us a huge advantage in terms of network performance. The fact that we have network control of both the CDN layer, as well as your website hosting server, makes communication between them incredibly fast. By using internal paths between the servers, we are eliminating any delays and latencies that can be seen with third-party CDN providers that use the public network to communicate with your site's hosting server. In short, this ensures the fastest private network between our CDN locations and our shared hosting servers, resulting in faster website loading speeds for our customers.
No configuration and simple administration
Thanks to the fact that every layer of our system, from the hosting environment, to the website admin panel, to the centralized DNS, is built in-house, we can offer our clients an easy and convenient way to add a CDN layer to their websites with literally one click. It also allows us to implement the CDN functionalities you need and make them available in an easy-to-use interface right within SiteGround's website admin interface - Site Tools.
Everything from configuring SiteGround CDN to enabling/disabling a certain feature is handled automatically in our backend. All you have left to do is click a few simple buttons in Site Tools -> Speed -> CDN section of your site. This way we are saving you a lot of annoying actions:
No external CDN control panels – you don’t need to log in anywhere lebanon whatsapp number data except your Site Tools.
There is no need to change and use external nameservers – everything happens within our central DNS records.
There is no need to create additional DNS records for the www prefix version of your domains - we will route absolutely everything through our CDN service, regardless of whether your site opens with the WWW or non-WWW version of your domain.
No additional HTTP configuration: No specific cookie settings, no need to implement anything in your application. Simply click the “Activate” button and your content will be served from the SiteGround CDN location closest to your site visitors.
SiteGround CDN Beta Features
After successfully passing our detailed internal tests, SiteGround CDN Beta is now available for testing. Currently, SiteGround customers can enable it for their websites' primary domain names with a single click, absolutely free of charge. Here's a quick overview of the features that are currently available to all users who decide to use SiteGround Cloud CDN in Beta:
Access all available CDN locations we currently offer.
Static and dynamic caching without additional configuration - Third-party CDN services typically only cache and serve static content by default (website images, CSS, Javascript, etc.). With SiteGround Cloud CDN, you can choose to cache both your site's static and dynamic content with a single click. This way, our CDN will instantly serve cached copies of your site's dynamically generated pages by default, instead of just static content.