Introduction of AWS CloudFront and its features

What is AWS CloudFront

• Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Improves read performance, content is cached at the edge
• 225+ Point of Presence globally (edge locations)
• DDoS protection, integration with Shield, AWS Web Application Firewall
• Can expose external HTTPS and can talk to internal HTTPS backends

 

What can be AWS CloudFront – Origins

• S3 bucket:
  • For distributing files and caching them at the edge
  • Enhanced security with CloudFront Origin Access Identity (OAI)
  • CloudFront can be used as an ingress (to upload files to S3)
• Custom Origin (HTTP)
  • Application Load Balancer
  • EC2 instance
  • S3 website (must first enable the bucket as a static S3 website)
  • Any HTTP backend you want

CloudFront Caching

• Cache based on • Headers• Session Cookies • Query String Parameters
• The cache lives at each CloudFront Edge Location
• You want to maximize the cache hit rate to minimize requests on the origin
• Control the TTL (0 seconds to 1 year), can be set by the origin using the Cache- Control header, Expires header...
• You can invalidate part of the cache using the CreateInvalidation API

CloudFront Geo Restriction

• You can restrict who can access your distribution
• Whitelist: Allow your users to access your content only if they're in one of the countries on a list of approved countries.
• Blacklist: Prevent your users from accessing your content if they're in one of the countries on a blacklist of banned countries.
• The “country” is determined using a 3rd party Geo-IP database • Use case: Copyright Laws to control access to content

CloudFront Signed URL / Signed Cookies

• You want to distribute paid shared content to premium users over the world
• To Restrict Viewer Access, we can create a CloudFront Signed URL / Cookie
• How long should the URL be valid for? Shared content (movie, music): make it short (a few minutes) Private content (private to the user): you can make it last for years
• Signed URL = access to individual files (one signed URL per file) Signed Cookies = access to multiple files (one signed cookie for many files)

1. Go to the AWS Console
2. Create Amazon EC2 instances
3. Create an Application Load Balancer
4. Create target groups with EC2 instances

result : contentloading time without using cloud front [193ms]

1. Create a CloudFront distribution
2. Configure your origin

1. Configure default cache behavior
2. Configure set cache based on selected request headers to "all"
3. Save distribution

Result: contentloading time after using cloudfront domain:[52ms]