Amazon CloudFront

CloudFront is Amazon's Content Delivery Network (CDN). A CDN is a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver web pages and other web content to a user based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the web page and a content delivery server.

Let's that we're running a web site from London without a CDN. We'll get different latencies from different locations. This site might be fast for users in France. Unfortunately it might be slow for users in Australia.

With CloudFront, users contact an Edge Location instead. Amazon currently have over 50 edge locations. This Edge Location will check if the object is cached. If not, the object will be retrieved from the Origin and then cached for a certain Time To Live (TTL). It's only the first user that experiences the penalty.

Amazon CloudFront can be used to deliver your entire website, including dynamic, static, streaming, and interactive content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your content are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance.

Amazon CloudFront is optimized to work with other Amazon Web Services, like Amazon Simple Storage (S3), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and Amazon Route 53. Amazon CloudFront also works seamlessly with any non-AWS origin server which stores the original, definitive versions of your files.

Terminology

  • Edge Location: The location where content will be cached. This is separate to an AWS Region/Availability Zone. Edge locations are not just READ only, you can write to them too (PUT).
  • Origin: The origin of all the files that the CDN will distribute. This can be either an S3 Bucket, an EC2 Instance, an Elastic Load Balancer, Route53, or a non-AWS server.
  • Distribution: The name given to the CDN which consists of a collection of Edge Locations. CloudFront has two delivery methods:
    • Web Distribution: Typically used for websites, specifically HTTP/HTTPS.
    • RTMP Distribution: Used for media streaming with the Adobe Real Time Messaging Protocol (flash).

Caching and Invalidating

Objects are cached for the life of the TTL (Time To Live, in seconds). If the object is changed in the origin, the changes won't be seen at the Edge Location until the TTL has expired.

Invalidating objects removes them from CloudFront edge caches. Clearing cached objects costs money so you'll want to try and avoid it. Good CloudFront design involves choosing an appropriate TTL for your application.

Restrictions

When creating a CloudFront distribution, you can choose to Restrict Bucket Access. This prevents users from accessing the bucket without using an edge location. If this feature is enabled you must choose an Origin Access Identity. This is the user that will then be used to access the bucket.

Restrict Viewer Access is an option that appears when creating a CloudFront distribution. You can choose to use signed URLs or signed cookies. This option allows one to make sure that only certain (e.g. paying) customers can access content.

Geo Restriction can be used to prevent users in selected countries from accessing your content. You may create a blacklist or a whitelist.