What defines a Content Distribution Network (CDN)?

A Content Distribution Network (CDN) is fundamentally defined by its architecture as a large, distributed system of servers strategically located across various geographic locations. This design allows the CDN to cache and serve content, such as web pages, images, and videos, closer to end-users, which enhances the performance and speed of content delivery. By distributing the data across multiple servers, CDNs can reduce latency, improve load times, and alleviate bandwidth usage on the origin server.

The distributed nature of CDNs also provides benefits like redundancy and reliability. If one server goes down or experiences issues, other servers can continue serving content, ensuring that users have continuous access without interruption. This decentralized approach is crucial for improving user experience and maintaining high availability for online services.

While other answer choices reference components of networking and security, they do not encapsulate the essential characteristic of a CDN, which is its widespread architecture designed expressly for the efficient delivery of content.