# CDN provider

> A CDN (content delivery network) is a network of servers around the world that delivers a website's files from a place close to each visitor, such as Cloudflare or Fastly.

- **Check ID:** F7
- **Area:** [Tech Stack](https://be1st.ai/glossary/fingerprint)
- **Tool:** [Tech Stack](https://be1st.ai/tools/tech-stack)
- **Page:** https://be1st.ai/glossary/fingerprint/cdn-provider

## Why it matters

A CDN dramatically reduces latency for end users. A site without a CDN serves content from a single server, resulting in higher latency for distant visitors. Cloudflare also provides DDoS protection and WAF.

## In practice

A site behind Cloudflare has TTFB under 100ms even for visitors from other continents. A site on shared hosting without a CDN can have TTFB of 500ms+ for international visitors. A CDN also reduces load on the origin server.

## How be1st checks it

CDN provider identification: Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai, CloudFront, Google CDN. Detection via HTTP headers (cf-ray, x-cache, x-amz-cf-id), DNS records, and certificates.

[Tech Stack](https://be1st.ai/tools/tech-stack), Frameworks tab.

## Sources

- [Cloudflare - How CDN Works](https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cdn/what-is-a-cdn/) (Cloudflare)

## Related terms

- [Response time (TTFB)](https://be1st.ai/glossary/performance/response-time-ttfb): Time to First Byte (TTFB) is the time from sending a request to receiving the first byte of the server's answer. It shows how fast the server and the network respond.
- [Hosting / server info](https://be1st.ai/glossary/fingerprint/hosting-server-info): Hosting and server info covers the web server software (Nginx, Apache, LiteSpeed) and the reverse proxy or host a website runs on.
- [Website type classification](https://be1st.ai/glossary/fingerprint/website-type-classification): Website type classification sorts a site into a type, such as e-shop, blog, marketplace or news portal, based on the technologies and content found on it.
- [Social networks](https://be1st.ai/glossary/fingerprint/social-networks): Social network links are the links from a website to its profiles on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok and other networks.
- [Visible text extraction](https://be1st.ai/glossary/fingerprint/visible-text-extraction): Visible text extraction turns a web page into the plain text a visitor actually reads, without HTML tags, scripts, styles or hidden elements.
- [Word count](https://be1st.ai/glossary/fingerprint/word-count): Word count is the number of words in the visible text of a page, after the code and hidden elements are removed.