The first Content Delivery Network (CDN) emerged in Italy during the mid-1990s, born out of experiments conducted by NEXUS International Broadcasting Association (NEXUS-IBA). This Milan-based non-profit served as an incubator for broadcasting and Internet technologies and played a pivotal role in shaping the early CDN landscape. The core idea behind the CDN was to create a network of servers spread across various geographical locations, all hosting identical content. This distributed approach aimed to overcome the limitations of centralized server systems, particularly when handling large multimedia files like streaming.

NEXUS-IBA's pioneering work culminated in the launch of the first commercial CDN caleld WordDirector in 1995. This innovation marked a significant leap forward in content delivery, promising smoother streaming, faster webpage loading, and improved search engine rankings for websites. The CDN effectively minimized data packet loss during transfer and offered scalability and redundancy through its network of servers. This development laid the foundation for the modern CDN, a technology now widely adopted to deliver content seamlessly and efficiently to users around the world.