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Beyond Global Waves
What is a Content Delivery Network (CDN)?
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This podcast in the seires “Beyond Global Waves” discusses the history of the Content Delivery Network (CDN), highlighting its Italian origins.

In the mid-1990s, NEXUS-International Broadcasting Association, a non-profit broadcast and technology incubator based in Milan, Italy, pioneered the first experiments with this technology. This first-ever CDN was called WordDirector and was developed by NEXUS-IBA R&D lab in Milano, Italy in 1994, and used for beta-testing of the RealAudio technology, the first audio streaming technology used by NEXUS-IBA to broadcast radio programs internationally across the Internet.

NEXUS subsequently launched the first commercial version of its CDN  (WorldDirector) in 1995, marking a pivotal moment in the evolution of content delivery. This technology was later exploited commercially and has been made available through Milano Ventures, an Irish company based in Dublin.

The podcast indicates that other CDN systems was later designed in the USA, and Content Delivery Networks, including WordlDirector, are widely adopted not only to stream audio & video, but for high traffic websites and web apps.
Read more about WorldDirector and the inner workings of a CDN on the NEXUS-IBA website.
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