What are the benefits of using a CDN with DDoS protection as an alternative to dedicated DDoS mitigation?

Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) with integrated DDoS protection, like Cloudflare or Akamai, offers several benefits. CDNs distribute your content across a global network of servers, which inherently absorbs and mitigates a significant portion of volumetric DDoS attacks by distributing the traffic. They also provide caching, improving website performance and reducing the load on your origin server. Furthermore, CDNs often include Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) to protect against application-layer attacks, offering a layered security approach that can be more efficient and cost-effective than solely relying on dedicated DDoS mitigation hardware or services.