3 min read
Here’s some really good news for internet users in Pakistan: the experience is about to get a lot better as Cloudflare, one of the world’s most prominent Content Delivery Network and domain security provider is launching three new data centers in Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi.
What is Cloudflare, and why I should I care?
Think about how you actually use the internet. You fire up your laptop, mobile or any other device that you are using, type in a site and then hit enter. Then magically a site appears on your screen, with all the cool stuff like videos on YouTube, songs on Spotify, endless stores of memes or trolls on Reddit and so on.
What happens at the backend is that when you hit enter, a request is generated on your end and it is routed through the internet of all the connected devices (how that happens is a whole another fascinating topic) and ultimately reaches the server where all those sweet memes are stored. The server sends the required data back to your devices and then you are able to see the content that you requested.
This simple example should be able to signify one important factor in this whole process, your device must be as close to the server as possible to make sure that your request doesn’t have to travel too much to get the content that you originally requested. This is where Cloudfare comes in. It provides servers all over the world to websites so that from wherever their customers are accessing their pages, their content gets deliver super fast.
Cloudflare in Pakistan? Yay! But now what?…
Cloudflare is one of the largest providers of CDNs and domain security around the world. More than 12 million different domains are currently employing the services of Cloudflare, which constitutes a big portion of the web that all of us use. It is now opening three new data centers in Pakistan. So what does that mean for you as an internet user?
It means that some of the sites will start performing much better now thanks to those data centers. In fact, according to statistics released by Cloudflare, some sites now open 3 times better on PTCL’s network after those data centers became operational. See the latency chart provided by Cloudflare below (latency is basically the time that it takes for the server to respond to your request for memes and other stuff):
Simply put, this will result in reduced load times for a lot of sites, apps, and games and reduce the lag that you see online quite a lot. Yay!
Cloudflare is still in process to route their existing network to use these data centers for Pakistani users, so the performance is expected to get much better in the coming days. This is huge for internet users in Pakistan and will definitely improve their online experience on sites which are using Cloudfare’s services.
In addition to Cloudfare, Akamai, which is another large company providing similar services worldwide, already has a partnership with PTCL. This new development with Cloudfare will definitely work towards further improving the experience of internet users in Pakistan.
