If you're not satisfied with the performance of your website (or how much you're paying for data transfer) perhaps it's time to look into content delivery networks.
Do you really need a content delivery network?
A CDN, or content delivery network, is a system of computers networked together across the Internet that cooperate to deliver content to end users, most often for the purpose of improving performance, scalability and cost efficiency. There's never a need to buy extra servers, for example.
There are many high quality content delivery networks available. Some noteworthy vendors (outside of Amazon Web Services) include Abacast, Akamai, CDNetworks, Cotendo, Edgecast, Highwinds, Mirror Image, Peer 1, VeloCix, Voxel, and Vusion.
Another content delivery network is TinyCDN, launched today. By the looks of it, this could be a CDN to consider if you're in the market. The software as a service (SaaS) leverages Amazon Web Services to make the benefits of content delivery more economical. TinyCDN seems to want to bring the benefits of CDNs to a larger group, and they may have done it. With a starter package of $9.95 (and a free trial) for 500 megabytes of storage and 10 gigabytes of transfer, it will surely gain some traction with small and medium size website owners.
"Data is not so different from people in that it has multiple ways to traverse the world. It can crawl slowly through crowded phone lines, bounce its way around the world through hundreds of servers, or it can hop onto a Content Distribution Network and reach its destination in no time at all," said John Curtis, CEO of TinyCDN. "But CDNs can be complicated, expensive and hard to use. We created TinyCDN to alleviate these challenges and bring the benefits of using a CDN to everyday users of the Internet."
