Amazon CloudFront (CF) 101

Ref: https://learn.cantrill.io/courses/1820301/lectures/41301521

Latency in Global Apps

Apps that are accessed globally have high latencies and slow transfer speeds when distances are long
- High latency deteriorates UX

🔧 CloudFront (CF) is a Content Delivery NW (CDN)
- Improves delivery of content from original location to viewers
- Caches data throughout AWS’ efficient global NW

Distribution → unit of configuration in CF
- Contains configurable behaviors
Origin = source location of content
- S3 Origin or Custom Origin
- A behavior can have many origins
Edge location → contains local cache of content
- 💡 AWS edge locations are pieces of global infrastructure where content is cached for better performance.
  - Unlike AWS regions, they don't contain the whole AWS infrastructure.
  - Edge locations are more numerous and widely distributed than regions (closer to customers)
Regional Edge Cache = larger version of an edge location cache
- Serves a group of edge locations in a region
  - Holds more data than edge locations
- Extra layer of caching (reduces calls to origin even more)

Integration with AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) for SSL certificates
‼️ ONLY supports download-style operations (reads only)!
- Write caching NOT supported in CF!!
- Any uploads go directly to the origin!