Mirror Site

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.

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To preserve historical content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

Related Reading

Linux: Bastion of Freedom
Why Now’s the Time to Ditch Windows XP

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.

All Articles by Margaret Rouse