Mirror Site

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What Does Mirror Site Mean?

A mirror site is a complete copy of a website or Web page that is placed under a different URL but is identical in every other way. Mirror sites are commonly used to relieve server traffic and are commonly located on different continents to serve the populations of those areas.

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A mirror site may also be known as a mirrored website.

Techopedia Explains Mirror Site

Mirroring a website is a form of data mirroring done for numerous reasons, including:

  • To preserve a website that is about to be closed or discontinued
  • To allow faster downloads from a specific or multiple geographic locations
  • To duplicate data in the interest of freedom of information
  • To prevent or discourage censorship of data
  • To increase access to the information for a wider audience for marketing, political, scientific, humanitarian or other purposes
  • To preserve historical content
  • To balance the load between or among several servers being accessed by large audiences
  • To increase download availability for local users
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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.