CDNs
This is where CDNs come in, Content Delivery Networks. The content you receive from a website has traveled across points in the network from the origin server all the way to your device. 🧭
With a CDN, a server closer to both me and my neighbor who also visits the site keeps a cached copy of the website assets. If anyone in my area has visited the site recently, the assets are already near me and don’t need downloaded all the way from the origin. Like if I'm in Glasgow, maybe a server in Manchester sends me the cached content.
Click the image above in the Glitch editor to see its code, check out the src attribute – it's being served from a CDN!
This is handy, but we’re just talking about static assets like images and other content, and there’s more to web applications than that – they're interactive experiences built using code... 🛼