Increase web content delivery! Explore Amazon CloudFront, its global content delivery network service, and how it accelerates the distribution of websites, videos, and APIs.
If your company wants to move to cloud-native or virtual servers and services, you've probably considered Amazon AWS as an option. As one of the “Big 3” cloud providers, AWS is an excellent solution for companies to massively scale their offerings. AWS services can handle any demand you throw at it without even blinking a metaphorical eye.
There are some companies, however, that have very specific needs, such as delivering larger files to customers. This could be in the form of videos or other large format/bulky media. If your company opts for a company that is unable to meet demand, you could end up with customers with less than ideal experiences. In this age of constant media streaming, no one is willing to settle for choppy, buffering videos.
To solve the larger media delivery problem, Amazon created CloudFront.
What is CloudFront?
Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that provides a globally distributed network of proxy servers that cache larger media files to improve access speeds for customers wherever they are. Like all of Amazon's cloud offerings, CloudFront is offered as a pay-as-you-go service.
As of 2020, CloudFront operates across 205 different points of presence across 6 different continents and with proxy servers located in Europe (UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany and Spain), Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and India), Australia, South America, Africa and several major cities in the United States. When a user requests content served through CloudFront, the request is routed to the edge location that can provide the best possible performance.
CloudFront request routing is handled through the AWS backbone to successfully and quickly deliver requested content. If the content is already in the edge location with the lowest latency, the content will be delivered immediately. If your content is not in the most efficient edge location, CloudFront retrieves it from an origin that you define (such as an Amazon AWS bucket or web server) as the definitive version of the content.
CloudFront is not limited to just serving video files, but also entire websites, APIs, .html, .css, .js, and image files. Whatever you need to reach your customers and clients, CloudFront can help.
What is a proxy server?
To better understand what CloudFront does, it's important to know about proxy servers. Effectively, a proxy server is any machine that translates traffic between networks and/or protocols. The proxy serves as an intermediary between a client requesting a resource and a server providing the resource.
Proxy servers can be used to:
- Improve security.
- Secure LAN (local area network) activity.
- Control access to the website.
- Save bandwidth by caching files or compressing traffic.
One of the biggest differences between CloudFront and a regular proxy server is that CloudFront doesn't compress content. In fact, CloudFront doesn't make changes to content to optimize delivery. Instead, what CloudFront does is speed up content delivery, bringing it closer to the user to minimize the hops required to satisfy the request.
Benefits of using CloudFront
CloudFront offers several benefits that will not only go a long way in delighting your customers, but will also help your business save money. Some of the benefits include:
Speed
CloudFront enables your customers to access your content much faster than if you delivered files and websites using standard methods.
Cost savings
Your company only pays for content delivered through the CloudFront network. There are no minimums or upfront fees.
Reliability
Because CloudFront uses Amazon's worldwide infrastructure, you can be confident that your content will be delivered with a level of reliability that other competitors may not be able to offer.
Simplicity
With CloudFront, a single API call makes it easy to start using the service.
Elasticity
CloudFront automatically scales depending on demand.
Global
CloudFront is available globally, so you can be sure there's a point of presence close to your users.
Website acceleration
Dramatically speed up your website delivery.
Static or dynamic content
CloudFront can be used to accelerate the delivery of static and dynamic content.
Cryptography
CloudFront includes AWS Shield Standard and AWS Web Application Firewall to protect your content.
AWS Integration
Integrate any of Amazon's services with CloudFront. All these services can be accessed from the same console for easy management.
Amazon CloudFront use cases
Let's now take a look at some of the popular use cases for Amazon CloudFront.
- Speeding up the delivery of static website content. If your website consists of images, stylesheets, and JavaScript, CloudFront can not only speed up the delivery of that content but also keep it secure.
- Video on demand and live streaming. If your business relies on the ability to deliver video content to customers, CloudFront can handle streaming and on-demand video formats such as MPEG, DASH, Apple HLS, Microsoft Smooth Streaming, and CMAF.
- Global availability. Use CloudFront to make content quickly accessible across multiple geographic locations while minimizing the need for EC2 instances (thus cutting costs).
- Web applications. If you deliver web applications from your website, CloudFront can dramatically speed up the delivery of those applications.
- Amalgamate services. If you have multiple services hosted on different domains, you can group them together under a single domain or cache.
Conclusion
If you're looking for the best possible delivery of your company's content to customers and clients, CloudFront could be your best option. With the ability to cache content and retrieve it from the best possible location while running on the world's most powerful network backbone, CloudFront is a powerful option for dramatically improving content delivery while simultaneously time, save money.
