Content Delivery Networks (CDN) are exactly what they sound like—servers that deliver web contents like HTML pages, javascript files, stylesheets, and images and videos. CDN servers, however, are not hosting servers. They are just servers that cache the contents from an actual hosting server. Think of CDN servers as a mailman. A mailman won't write the letters, they'll just hold it and then give it to you.
CDNs are mostly used for maintaining web traffic. Without CDN a typical web traffic would have the users connect to the hosting server directly to grab the web contents they need. This is not a bad idea, but if there were millions of users that wanted to reach the server, the server might not be able to handle that many requests. Even if it could handle a large number the users would have to wait for a long time because the server has to deal with a million other users before it reaches you. CDN solves this problem by breaking down the way a user accesses web contents into much more manageable sizes. When a user requests web contents they now have to access it from one of the nearest CDN servers. So, if a user was from Australia and wanted the contents from a host in America they wouldn't have to wait for a connection to travel the long distance, the CDN server that's located closest to them will have and give them the content. Not only does this lighten the load of receiving too many requests on one server, but it also lets the users grab the contents much faster as it works similarly to wifi—the closer you are the faster it is. Additionally, because CDNS handle the requests it eliminates a direct attack to the host making the host server more secure.
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