A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and data centers that delivers web content to users from the server nearest to them. Instead of every request traveling to a single origin server (which might be on another continent), the CDN caches and serves content from edge locations around the world, reducing latency and improving load times.
When you deploy a website or API behind a CDN, the CDN becomes the first point of contact for all requests. If the CDN's edge server has a cached copy of the requested content, it serves it directly without contacting the origin. If not (a "cache miss"), the edge server fetches from the origin, serves the response, and caches it for subsequent requests. CDNs use cache headers (Cache-Control, ETag, Expires) to determine what to cache and for how long.
Modern CDNs like Cloudflare go beyond simple caching. They provide DDoS protection, Web Application Firewalls, bot management, edge computing (Workers), image optimization, and automatic TLS. The CDN absorbs malicious traffic before it reaches the origin, and edge compute lets you run application logic at the network edge for sub-millisecond response times.
Page load speed directly affects user experience, search rankings, and conversion rates. A CDN can reduce time-to-first-byte (TTFB) from hundreds of milliseconds to single digits for cached content. For global audiences, the difference is dramatic: a user in Tokyo accessing a server in Virginia might experience 200ms+ latency, but a CDN edge in Tokyo serves the same content in under 20ms. CDNs also provide reliability -- if the origin goes down, cached content continues serving.
TerminalFeed is hosted entirely on Cloudflare Pages with Cloudflare Workers for the API. Every request hits Cloudflare's CDN first, with edge caching for static assets and Worker-level caching for API responses. This is how a single-developer project serves global traffic with consistently fast load times.