These days, everyone wants a fast and seamless website experience. The website performance should be smooth and super. In this online world, there is fierce competition and the users have become a target and demand more when it comes to their online experiences. To do this, the users need to optimize the front-end and the back-end of the website architecture.
CDN (Content Delivery Networks) are used by websites and apps to increase the speed of static elements. Speeding up the site is done by caching files on CDN servers that are located in different regions of the world. When the user requests data via CDN, the nearest server provides them.
The principles behind the CDNs and the functionality are almost the same for all the users. When a CDN receives a request for a file, the server takes it from the origin server and then transfers it to the user and caches a copy of it. Then it requests for the data that is handled by using the cache. All CDNs can pre-load the files, clear cache, cache retention times, and more.
Here we present a guide on How to build your own CDN. If you do not have time and resources to build your own cdn then you use service of best cdn providers listed in one of our article.
When do you need your own CDN?
These are the situations when you might need to your own CDN, have a look:
- If you need special content delivery settings.
- Want more speed of the delivery of the dynamic content.
- The CDNs you have do not have PoPs in your region.
- If you want a permanent cache or need guaranteed bandwidth and resources.
- When you try to save money
To create a Content Delivery Network (CDN) you need:
- a domain name or a subdomain
- Two servers in different regions. It can be virtual or dedicated.
- A geoDNS tool. With the tool, the user sends a request to the domain and it will be directed to the nearest server.
How to Build your own CDN?
1. Registering domain and ordering servers
Select any domain and register the name. You can also use a subdomain, for CDN like cdn.domainname.com. When you select servers, you must rent those servers in regions and countries where your audience is located. And if your project is intercontinental, you must select from the hosting providers that offer servers globally like OVH.
2. Configure geoDNS
You will need a DNS server with geoDNS functionality because you need to make sure that the clients are directed to the proper server while sending requests to the domain or subdomain.
geoDNS works like this:
- If the user has sent the DNS request, geoDNS get the client’s IP or the recursive DNS server IP which is used for processing the request.
- With the help of the IP, the geoDNS identifies the country or region of the user. This requires the use of the GeoIP database.
- The geoDNS returns the user’s IP address of the closest CDN server as it depends on the client’s location.
You can easily build a DNS server with geoDNS functionality, but if you use the ready solutions that are available then it will be better. There are different DNS available including, ClouDNS, Zilore, Amazon Route, DNS Made Easy, Cloudflare, and more.
However, while ordering the geoDNS, do check the number of requests that are included in the package and also remember the real requests number. As there are so many web spammers available. All the DNS services have a feature for building CDN. With it, configure the activity monitoring, it helps you when the server goes down the system will automatically redirect the clients to the other servers that are working.
Here is an example of building CDN by using ClouDNS and its GeoDNS package.
- Firstly, add a new DNS zone in your profile and give a domain name.
- If you are using a sub-domain and the main domain is in use, then add the existing DNS record after adding the zone.
- Now, create few A records for the CDN domain or sub-domain. Each record will be used for a specific region. If you want, you can designate continents or countries as a region, and subregion.
- In this example, the CDN is operating on cdn.sayt.in subdomain.
- As it is added in the zone, you should first create A record for the subdomain and direct all the NA clients to the different servers.
- Repeat this for other regions and create one record for default regions. Here’s the result:
- The last default record means a request from all the unspecified regions to be directed to the Frankfurt server.
A basic DNS configuration is ready. Now, you have to register the website and replace the current nameservers that are provided by ClouDNS. It will be getting updated, till then set the servers.
3. Installing SSL certificates
This CDN uses HTTPS, so if you are having SSL certificates for the domain or the subdomain, directly upload them to all the servers. But, if you don’t have any certificates, then you can get them for free from Let’s Encrypt. You can use the ACME Shell script, as it has a user-friendly client and it allows you to perform valid domain/sub-domain via DNS by using API.
4. Installing and configuring Nginx
Nginx is used for static content delivery, configure it as a caching proxy server. You need to update the lists of packages and install it on all the servers:
This is how you can build your own CDN. You can can learn about adding subtitle to video here
