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ADN – Application Delivery Network

Forrest Stroud
Last Updated May 24, 2021 7:34 am

ADN is short for Application Delivery Network. The ADN is a suite of technologies developed to provide application availability, security, visibility and acceleration. ADNs are designed to ensure the safe and efficient distribution of business-critical applications across an enterprise’s network.

Compare ADN and ADC

Application Delivery Network and the closely-related term Application Delivery Controller (ADC) were marketing monikers first promoted by F5 Networks and later by competing ADN and ADC vendors for hardware and software solutions that provide front-end intelligence to facilitate and optimize application flows from client to server and back to the client.

Application Delivery Networks vs. Content Delivery Networks

Application Delivery Networks are often compared to Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), and the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. The two types of networks share similarities and are both used to accelerate the web experience for users while reducing load times, but CDNs are typically deployed to optimize static content, whereas ADNs are more frequently used for web acceleration of dynamic content.