It is very common to encounter a mirror website on the internet. Even if you haven’t noticed it, you probably are using mirrors for a lot of websites. The main purpose of a mirror website is to reduce network traffic. As the name sounds, a mirror website is a mirror image or an exact replica of the existing website. A mirror website is usually a sub-domain of the already existing website.
Why do we need Mirror Websites?
There can be multiple reasons for having a mirror website but the most prominent one is to reduce traffic on one server. Let’s say you are downloading a file from Sourceforge. Just like you, a 1000 more people were downloading the same file. This would lead to too much load on that server and everyone will get slow speeds. To solve this, a mirror website is used. The mirror site is an exact replica of the original site with all its contents. These mirrors are usually hosted or served from different parts of the world. So that in case the original site goes down the mirror can still be running. Another benefit is that for any user, a website can be served quickest if that mirror is geographically closer to him/her.
Who uses Mirrors
A significant number of websites use mirrors for different motives. Torrent websites use mirrors so that if one gets banned the other one can keep operating. Various Linux distributions use mirrors to provide the fastest download to their users. Websites like Sourceforge use mirrors to provide faster downloads to their users and to reduce heavy traffic.