Is CDN and Cloud are same?

Question

Is the CDN and Cloud computing are same? If both are different, how they differ? I have googled it, when someone asked me this question. But i could not able to get any clear idea on this. So can anyone explain about this, which would be greatly useful to lot of people.

And also please explain where the CDN will be used and where the cloud will be used?

Solution 1

CDN is simply a network of servers that replicate your binary files so that they are served from geographically close locations. CDN has been around for a lot longer than cloud computing as you know it today.

Not every cloud provider is a CDN, and not every CDN is a cloud computing provider.

Cloud computing is simply - dividing up a large computing resource (usually processing power) into little chunks which you can use remotely.

CDN is simply - a bunch of "disks" that are spread across the world in different datacenters. You upload your file to one of these disks - and then tell it where your customers are coming from. It will then copy the same file to other disks that are nearer to your customers; giving your visitors a faster experience. This collection of disks is called the content delivery network.

One of the biggest names in CDN is Akamai.

Solution 2

The big difference is that cloud computing is a big group of servers in 1 data center building which is usually at one location. On the other hand CDN is also group of servers but distributed around the country so it allows web visitors a better and faster access to the website. For example if you're in A location trying to access a server in B it can be faster to be hitting a server locally in A for the files. The CDN is usually able to support much larger traffic volumes since the speed is calculated based on location the traffic comes from.

CDN work on the principle of delivering content form the nearest located server as per user location. CDN is short is a way to boost and speed up your website turn around time.

Solution 3

Short answer: They are different. Detailed one follows:

• CDN short for Content delivery network is more like edge computing. It follows end-to-end principle of networking meaning, as much work can be de-centralized and distributed to nodes near user, do it. Reduce single point of failure. You can read a small article written by me at : http://www.sitepoint.com/content-delivery-networks-cdn-get-to-the-edge/

• Cloud Computing is much more than delivering content near edge. It's elastic computing, storage and network on demand in very broad sense. For computing you need: storage & processing power and that's what is provided by Cloud Computing

Comments

[Stranger]

If somebody likes to close this question, please put some reason for that..

[nhahtdh]

They are different. CDN is the content delivery network, a network built to serve content based on location (e.g. same content is served from different server based on the request location). Cloud computing is hardware/software as service, i.e. you pay to get certain amount of resource and existing software. CDN would require actual server to be placed on different places around the world, and cloud computing would require large amount of hardware resource to provide as service.

[MarsAndBack]

hmmm, wouldn't "a big group of servers in 1 data center building" be considered a traditional centralized system? I always considered cloud computing to simply be distributed computing... which means data centres across the world, and is the main selling point that AWS and Google Cloud offer.