Edge nodes located near user populations hold cached copies of content and serve most requests without contacting the origin.

The CDN encrypts traffic between the origin and the user, which removes the encryption work from the origin server itself.

Edge nodes apply load balancing across multiple origin servers so that no single origin server has to handle the full traffic volume.

The CDN compresses content before sending it to users, which reduces the size of each response and the work the origin must do to serve it.