What is Amazon CloudFront?
• Amazon CloudFront is a fast content delivery
network (CDN) service that securely delivers
data, videos, applications, and APIs to
customers globally with low latency and high
transfer speeds.
• Global Network: CloudFront leverages AWS
global infrastructure with edge locations
across the world.
Key Features of CloudFront
• Global Edge Locations: 450+ Points of Presence (PoPs) in
edge locations.
• Low Latency & High Transfer Speeds: Delivers content
with high performance.
• Support for Dynamic & Static Content: Optimizes both
dynamic content (APIs, live streaming) and static content
(images, CSS).
• Seamless Integration: Works with AWS services like S3,
EC2, and Lambda@Edge.
• Automatic Scaling: Scales automatically to handle traffic
spikes.
How Amazon CloudFront Works
• Step 1: Content is hosted in origin servers (S3,
EC2, or custom).
• Step 2: CloudFront caches content at edge
locations.
• Step 3: User requests are routed to the nearest
edge location for faster delivery.
• Step 4: If content is not cached, CloudFront
retrieves it from the origin server and stores it
in the edge cache for future requests.
How Amazon CloudFront Works
How Amazon CloudFront Works
CloudFront Use Cases
• Website Acceleration: Speeds up the delivery of web
content (HTML, CSS, JS).
• Video Streaming: Delivers media streaming for live and
on-demand video (support for formats like HLS, MPEG-
DASH).
• API Acceleration: Improves the performance of APIs by
caching responses.
• Software Distribution: Ideal for distributing large files like
software updates, games, and applications.
• E-Commerce: Low latency and secure delivery for high-
traffic e-commerce platforms.
CloudFront Security Features
• AWS Shield: DDoS protection at no additional cost.
• AWS WAF: Web Application Firewall for blocking
malicious requests.
• Field-level Encryption: Encrypt sensitive data at
the edge before transmitting to the origin.
• HTTPS Support: Secure content delivery using
SSL/TLS.
• Geo Restriction: Restrict content access based on
the geographical location of users.
Pricing Model
• Pay-as-You-Go: No upfront costs, pricing based on
data transfer out and HTTP/HTTPS requests.
• Regional Pricing: Costs vary by geographic region
(North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, etc.).
• Discounted Rates: Savings plans for high-traffic
workloads and long-term commitments
• Free Tier: 1 TB of data transfer out free for 12
months.
Integration with Other AWS Services
• Amazon S3: CloudFront can pull static assets from
S3 for fast delivery.
• Elastic Load Balancing (ELB): CloudFront can cache
and deliver content served from ELB.
• AWS Lambda@Edge: Extend CloudFront with
serverless computing, allowing code execution
closer to users (e.g., A/B testing, user
personalization).
• Amazon Route 53: Easily configure DNS routing for
your CloudFront distribution.
