What is a content-delivery network?¶

A content-delivery network, or CDN, uses distributed servers to deliver website material from locations closer to users.

How it works¶

The website operator configures the CDN to receive requests for the site. The CDN may return a stored copy of an image, script or page, or pass the request to the website’s origin server and relay the response.

It works rather like regional warehouses: customers receive the same product from a nearby depot instead of every order travelling from the factory.

This improves speed and resilience, but changes what an IP lookup shows. The public address may identify a CDN server, not the origin host. Different users may receive different CDN addresses, and many unrelated websites may share them.

The CDN may hold customer and configuration data, request or security logs, and information about the origin to which traffic was forwarded. It may not hold the original content, publishing history or administrator account; those may remain with the website platform or origin host.

Frame any enquiry around the record actually needed: who configured the service, what traffic the CDN handled, what security event occurred, or where requests were forwarded at the relevant time.