CDN vs Distribution Server, What’s the difference?Solved

In enterprise device management, a distribution server is an on‑premise server that serves software packages and updates to local devices. It is like a “communication layer between your remote office computers and the central server”. It replicates software and patch binaries from the main server to the distribution server, so that remote office machines can download updates locally instead of each one pulling over the WAN. This “saves your WAN bandwidth”.

In practice, you set up a dedicated machine in a branch office as the distribution server. All the branch’s devices then download apps/patches from it. I can recommend using a distribution server when a remote office has more than about 10 computers, since it becomes inefficient otherwise.

Ah, so it’s like a local cache inside a company’s network. Does any MDM provide setting up a local host? Does Hexnode do it?

Precisely. Hexnode’s documentation on DAFS confirms this: it “functions as a local distribution server that allows devices to fetch apps and files over the local network instead of downloading them individually from the central Hexnode server. This significantly reduces internet bandwidth consumption and improves deployment speed”.

So rather than every laptop or phone in an office hitting the cloud to get the latest app, they all grab it from the nearby distribution server. The Windows-policy guide similarly notes that a DAFS means “instead of each device individually connecting to Hexnode’s server to download apps or updates, DAFS enables a local server within the office network to handle distribution. By the way, DAFS means Distributed Apps and Files Server.

This method helps reduce internet usage and improves deployment speed.

So, distribution servers are about internal efficiency. They require setting up a server (Windows or Mac) in each office, and then your MDM (like Hexnode) syncs all the apps/patches to it.

Devices in that site then get content from the local server. In contrast to CDNs, these servers aren’t serving the public Internet at all, just the company’s devices.

Exactly. Think of a CDN as a “public cache network” for the internet, whereas a distribution server is a “private cache server” for corporate networks. They both store copies of data, but CDNs are broad, external, and customer-facing, while distribution servers are narrow, internal, and admin‑controlled. The concept is similar (cache and distribute content), but their roles and scales differ entirely.