How AWS CloudFront Delivers Low Latency and Improved Security Content

AWS CloudFront: How it Works

CloudFront is an AWS content delivery network service that uses a global edge network. Amazon CloudFront is well connected to all major access networks and peers with thousands of Tier 1/2/3 telecom providers internationally for best performance. It also has a deployment capacity of hundreds of terabits. Through the fully redundant, multiple 100GbE parallel fibers that circle the globe and link with tens of thousands of networks for improved origin fetches and dynamic content acceleration, CloudFront edge sites are connected to the AWS Regions through the AWS network backbone.

Amazon CloudFront leverages a worldwide network of 450+ Points of Presence and 13 regional edge caches in 90+ cities across 49 countries to serve content to end users with lower latency. Locations for Amazon CloudFront Edge include:

Image Source:

Cloudfront-Map_9.24_2x.2eeac6e52bf404816c6d0aac3edbeb7b6b87fdaa.png (3001×1701) (awsstatic.com)

Features

1. Protection from attacks at the application and network layers: AWS CloudFront works seamlessly with other AWS services like WAF and Shield to build a flexible, tiered security barrier against various assaults, such as DDoS attacks at the network and application layers. These services coexist at the AWS edge and offer a high-performance, scalable, dependable security perimeter for applications and information. The primary attack surface is shifted away from crucial content, data, code, and infrastructure by using CloudFront as the “front door” to an application and infrastructure.
2. Caching of data: Web applications frequently have to deal with traffic peaks during high activity. The quantity of requests from the application origin automatically decreases while using Amazon CloudFront. Only when necessary is content fetched from origins; otherwise, it is cached in CloudFront’s edge and regional caches. When a centralized caching layer is enabled utilizing Origin Shield, the load on application origins can be further decreased. Origin Shield reduces requests across regions and improves cache hit rates, resulting in as few as one origin request for each object. The decreased traffic enhances the availability of your applications to your origins.
3. Origin Failover: To ensure redundancy in the backend architecture, CloudFront allows numerous origins. When the primary origin is unavailable, CloudFront’s native origin failover feature automatically serves content from a backup origin. The sources configured using origin failover can be any combination of non-AWS origins like an on-premises HTTP server and AWS origins like EC2 instances, Amazon S3 buckets, or Media Services.
4. Geo-restriction: You can utilize geographic limits, also called geo-blocking, to restrict access to content you deliver through a CloudFront distribution to users in particular geographic areas.

Invalidations: If a file in the CloudFront edge caches has to be deleted before it expires, you can use invalidations in CloudFront. To invalidate, you can enter either the path for specific files or a path that ends with the * wildcard to invalidate files; the latter may apply to a single file or a number of files

Getting Started with CloudFront

Here are easy steps on how to use CloudFront.

Step 1. Log in to the AWS console to setup the distribution

Login to AWS Console with user credentials.

Step 2. Creating cloud-front distribution.

Go to the CloudFront dashboard and click on create distributions.

Choose your preferred origin.

Created distribution will appear in the list.

Step 3. All set! Deliver content more quickly.

Demo Architecture Diagram

CloudFront distribution with failover origin and WAF

Conclusion

A content delivery network (CDN) called Amazon CloudFront expedites the delivery of static and dynamic web content to end users.

Through what is known as an edge location network, CloudFront distributes content globally. The request is routed to the edge location with the lowest latency when an end user requests content you serve through CloudFront.

CloudFront distributes content by utilizing the AWS global network, which links AWS edge sites to AWS Regions. Moving the network traffic across the AWS global network reduces latency and strengthens the security posture of your application. By caching copies of your files at numerous edge locations worldwide, you can improve the dependability and accessibility of your web apps.

About CloudThat

CloudThat is at the forefront of cloud consulting & training in India with a decade of experience building a solid cloud ecosystem. We have trained 650K+ professionals on various cloud skills, trained 100+ corporates, and accomplished 500+ cloud certifications in 28+ countries. We are Microsoft Gold Partner, AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, Authorized AWS Training Partner, and Authorized VMware Training Reseller.

We deliver all-encompassing consulting services: Cloud Consulting & Migration, Cloud Data Platform, Cloud DevOps & DevSecOps, Cloud Contract Engineering, Cloud Media Services, and Cloud Managed Services.

You can learn more about our Cloud Consulting Services from this page.