Date: January 15, 2009
The internet in Norway is evolving rapidly. With broadband penetration rates among the highest in Europe and an increasing reliance on heavy Web 2.0 applications, the expectations of Norwegian users have never been higher. Gone are the days when a user would patiently watch a loading bar crawl across the screen. In 2009, speed isn't just a luxury; it is a business necessity.
For IT professionals and business owners hosting websites on a Dedicated Server or the increasingly popular VDS (Virtual Dedicated Server) platforms, managing latency is the next great frontier. If your servers are located in data centers in Germany, the UK, or—worse for latency—the United States, your Norwegian visitors are fighting the laws of physics every time they request a packet of data.
This guide delves into the implementation of a Content Delivery Network (CDN), a technology that is quickly moving from the domain of enterprise giants like VG.no and Finn.no to becoming an accessible necessity for small to medium-sized businesses.
The Latency Problem: Why Geography Matters
To understand why you need a CDN, you must first understand the journey of a data packet. When a customer in Tromsø visits your e-commerce store hosted on a server in Texas, the data must travel across the Atlantic, bounce through multiple hops in Europe, and finally traverse the Norwegian backbone to reach the user's ISP (likely Telenor or NextGenTel).
Even with fiber optics, this distance introduces latency. While your powerful Dedicated Server might generate the page in milliseconds, the network transit time (RTT) can add significant delay. This is where a CDN comes into play.
What is a Content Delivery Network?
A CDN is a system of distributed servers (network nodes) that deliver webpages and other Web content to a user based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage, and a content delivery server. In simpler terms, it caches your static content—images, CSS files, JavaScript, and Flash media—on servers physically closer to your visitors.
For a Norwegian user, a CDN ensures that instead of fetching a 200KB image from New York, they fetch it from a node in Oslo, Stockholm, or Copenhagen. The result? Drastically reduced load times.
The Hosting Foundation: VDS, VPS, and Dedicated Servers
Before implementing a CDN, it is crucial to audit your existing Web Hosting infrastructure. A CDN is a multiplier of performance, not a cure for a weak foundation.
In 2009, we are seeing a significant shift in the hosting market:
- Shared Hosting: Often insufficient for high-traffic business sites due to resource contention.
- Dedicated Server: The gold standard for raw power and isolation. Perfect for heavy database loads.
- VDS / VPS (Virtual Private Server): The rising star of 2009. Virtualization technology allows businesses to have root access and dedicated resources at a fraction of the cost of physical hardware.
- Cloud Hosting: A buzzword gaining traction with services like Amazon's EC2, offering scalable computing power.
If your base Server Management is poor—for instance, if your Apache configuration is unoptimized or your MySQL queries are slow—a CDN will only mask the problem, not solve it. Ensure your VDS or Dedicated Server is running efficiently before layering a CDN on top.
Step-by-Step CDN Implementation Guide
Implementing a CDN in 2009 has become significantly more streamlined compared to the complex setups of the early 2000s. Here is how IT professionals can deploy this technology effectively.
Phase 1: Content Audit and Segmentation
Not everything should be cached. The first step is to identify your static versus dynamic content.
- Static Content: Images (.jpg, .png, .gif), Stylesheets (.css), JavaScript (.js), Flash objects (.swf), and downloadable documents (.pdf). These are perfect candidates for a CDN.
- Dynamic Content: PHP files, ASP.NET pages, and database queries. These generally must remain on your origin VPS or Dedicated Server to ensure real-time accuracy (e.g., shopping cart contents or user login sessions).
Phase 2: Choosing a Delivery Method (Push vs. Pull)
Most modern CDNs offer two primary methods for populating their cache:
- Origin Pull (Recommended for most VDS setups): You rewrite your URLs to point to the CDN. When a user requests a file, the CDN checks if it has it. If not, the CDN requests it from your server, caches it, and serves it. This is