The ASP.NET development team is currently providing the new Microsoft AJAX CDN (Content Delivery Network) service. This CDN provides edge caching support for AJAX libraries including jQuery and ASP.NET AJAX. The service is provided free of charge, does not require any registration, and can be used for commercial and non-commercial purposes. This service provides a great way to increase the speed of external-facing websites.
What do CDNs provide?
Content delivery networks (CDNs) are composed of "edge cache" servers strategically placed at key Internet network points around the world. These "edge cache" servers can be used to cache and deliver various types of content, including images, videos, CSS and JavaScript files.
Using a CDN can significantly improve a website's end-user performance because it allows browsers to fetch and download content faster. For example, for an image request, the browser no longer needs to cross the Internet to your web server to download. A CDN can directly serve the request from a nearby "edge cache" server, and the edge cache server may be related to Your client is only a single network hop away (making returns very fast and making your web pages load faster).
What does Microsoft AJAX CDN provide?
Microsoft AJAX CDN makes it easy to add jQuery and ASP.NET AJAX script libraries to your website, and automatically serve these scripts from our thousands of geo-located edge caching servers around the world .
SSL support now also available
One feature we said back in September would be coming (but not yet available at the time of initial launch) is SSL support for scripts served on CDNs. This is necessary for scenarios where you have SSL-enabled pages on your website and want to reference script libraries on the Microsoft CDN and avoid displaying the message "This page contains more than just security information" to end users visiting your website. content, also contains unsafe content" security warning.
Those scripts hosted on the Microsoft AJAX CDN now have SSL support enabled. Just use the "https" tag for any script references on your site that point to the CDN, and the scripts will now be served over SSL. For example, here's an example of referencing jQuery over SSL:
The Microsoft AJAX CDN documentation has recently been updated with more details. You can visit here for details. This document lists all script libraries currently served via CDN. We're adding more script libraries to it all the time, and the documentation will be updated as new scripts become available.