By Sharon Florentine

Sharon Florentine is a freelance writer who covers everything from data center technology to holistic veterinary care and occasionally blogs for Rackspace Hosting.

Welcome to Generation Now. Today’s users want information in an instant. Make them wait more than a second or two for your webpage to load and they’ll surf over to the first competitor who feeds their demand for instant gratification.

Using a Content Delivery Network or Content Distribution Network (CDN) to quickly load static elements of your site to hasten access can deliver quicker gratification for customers. And stickier eyeballs — and greater profits — for you.

Basically, a CDN is a number of highly optimised web servers located around the globe, explains Joost de Valk in an article posted to Yoast.com. Though de Valk’s article deals specifically with using a CDN to speed performance of WordPress sites, a CDN is beneficial …