What is a content delivery network (CDN) primarily designed for?

A content delivery network (CDN) is primarily designed as a globally distributed system of caching servers. The purpose of a CDN is to enhance the user experience by delivering content—such as images, videos, and web pages—from locations that are geographically closer to the end user. This reduces latency, as the content can be served quickly and efficiently, minimizing the distance that data must travel.

By distributing copies of content across multiple caching servers located in different regions, a CDN can handle large amounts of traffic and provide redundancy. This network of servers ensures that users experience faster load times, reduced bandwidth costs, and improved reliability for services and content delivery, especially during peak usage times.

The other options do not capture the primary function of a CDN. A single point of service for all user requests would create bottlenecks and increase latency; direct data flow to specific application servers lacks the distributed nature of a CDN; and a central database for resource management does not align with the core purpose of content delivery through caching and proximity to users.