When a user visits a webpage, their request travels through the internet to reach the webserver. The webserver then sends a response back, which also travels through the internet to reach the user. This process introduces delays due to the distance the traffic must cover across the internet. Depending on the geographic locations of the user and the webserver, these delays can be significant, especially for data-heavy traffic.
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) addresses this issue by using a network of geographically distributed and interconnected servers. CDNs play a crucial role in minimizing latency and improving the delivery speed of content to end clients. AWS CloudFront is an example of a CDN service provided by AWS, which leverages this distributed infrastructure to optimize content delivery worldwide.
How CloudFront Works?
When a user request for a content (e.g. webpage), initial request is sent to the webserver. Webserver delivers the content to the user and copy of it is saved to the geographically closet edge location. When the same or different user request for the same content, CloudFront can deliver the content from the edge location instead of the webserver. This process helps in reducing the latency. Additionally the traffic between the origin server (webserver) and edge locations goes through AWS backbone, this reduces the hops through which contents needs to travel and further reduces latency.
You can configure AWS S3 or a webserver running on EC2 instances as a source of the data for CloudFront to deliver.
What are use cases for CDN?
CDNs excel in delivering static content such as webpages, images, and videos efficiently. For instance, an online movie hosting platform can utilize CDNs to distribute content from edge locations. This strategy minimizes latency for users by serving content closer to them geographically and reduces the load on the origin server.
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Benefits of using CloudFront as CDN
In addition to reducing latency, AWS CloudFront offers several other benefits:
- Reducing Bandwidth Costs : By caching and delivering content from edge locations, CloudFront reduces the load on the origin server. This lowers bandwidth usage and can lead to cost savings associated with web hosting, especially for high-traffic websites.
- Improved User Experience: Faster webpage loading times significantly enhance user experience. Users are less likely to abandon a site due to slow loading speeds when content is delivered quickly via CloudFront's distributed network of edge locations.
- Enhanced Security: CloudFront provides protection against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks by absorbing and mitigating large volumes of malicious traffic at edge locations. This safeguards the origin server from being overwhelmed and helps maintain availability during attacks.
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