Optimizing content delivery for global streaming platform with AWS Global Accelerator

Global Streaming services are designed to provide users with an immersive and high-quality streaming experience across a diverse range of content, including movies, TV shows, live events, and exclusive original productions.

Some of the challenges faced by this industry include:
1. Latency issues
2. Uneven performance for users in different regions
3. Availability and Failover concerns

AWS Global Accelerator has emerged as a powerful tool to address this need, offering a robust solution for optimizing the delivery of applications and services. In this blog post, we’ll explore the capabilities of AWS Global Accelerator, delve into a solution for a global streaming platform and compare it with similar services to highlight its unique advantages.

Understanding AWS Global Accelerator:

AWS Global Accelerator is a service that uses the vast Amazon global network to direct traffic from users to optimal AWS endpoint locations. It leverages a combination of Anycast IP addresses and dynamic, real-time routing algorithms to route traffic over the AWS global network, ensuring low-latency and high-availability connectivity.

Key Features of AWS Global Accelerator:

1. Anycast IP Addresses: Global Accelerator assigns static Anycast IP addresses to your application, providing a single entry point for your global users. This simplifies the DNS setup and allows AWS to route traffic to optimal endpoints.
2. Static Anycast Routing: Routes traffic over the AWS global network, directing users to the optimal endpoint based on health, geography, and routing policies. This ensures that users are always connected to the most performant and available resources.
3. Health Checks and Automatic Failover: Global Accelerator continuously monitors the health of your application endpoints. In case of a failure, it automatically redirects traffic to healthy endpoints, minimizing downtime and enhancing the resilience of your application.
4. Traffic Dials: Provides the ability to control the percentage of traffic directed to each endpoint. This can be useful for A/B testing, rolling out updates gradually, or managing traffic distribution during maintenance.

Solution Overview:

Below figure demonstrates the solution for a Global Streaming Platform that serves diverse range of content, including movies, TV shows, live events.

Solution Architecture

1. Traffic from users is sent to the AWS global network at the closest edge location.
2. Traffic reaches the AWS Global Accelerator which provides a set of two static IP addresses that are anycast from the AWS edge network. It also assigns a default Domain Name System (DNS) name to accelerator, that points to the static IP addresses. AWS Global Accelerator integrates with AWS Shield to provide protection against DDoS attacks. AWS Global Accelerator directs traffic to the optimal endpoint group based on proximity, health and endpoint weights.
3. Traffic reaches the optimal endpoint group. Each endpoint group is associated with a specific AWS Region. Endpoint groups include one or more endpoints in the Region.
4. Traffic is routed to appropriate endpoint based on performance and any policies configured.
5. The endpoints are attached to ELB which serve the content using Amazon EC2 instances and AWS Media Services.

Implementation details:

• Deploy AWS Global Accelerator and associate it with multiple endpoints strategically located in different AWS regions.
• Utilize Anycast IP addresses to ensure users are automatically directed to the nearest and healthiest endpoint.
• Configure health checks to monitor the availability of each endpoint and trigger automatic failover in case of issues.
• Leverage traffic dials to gradually shift traffic during updates and maintain a smooth user experience.

Outcomes:

• Significant reduction in latency for users globally, resulting in a smoother streaming experience.
• Improved resilience with automatic failover, minimizing downtime and ensuring uninterrupted service availability.
• Enhanced control over traffic distribution for updates, enabling seamless rollouts without impacting the entire user base.

Comparison with Similar Services:

1. AWS CloudFront : While AWS CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that accelerates the delivery of static and dynamic content, AWS Global Accelerator focuses on routing traffic to optimal endpoints. Global Accelerator is more suitable for applications with dynamic content that require low-latency routing.
2. Amazon Route 53 : Route 53 is a scalable domain name system (DNS) web service that translates domain names to IP addresses. While it provides DNS-based load balancing, many times there are issues due to caching of IP addresses on client side. AWS Global Accelerator offers a more sophisticated solution by utilizing Anycast IP addresses and dynamic routing to optimize traffic flow.

Conclusion:

AWS Global Accelerator stands as a formidable solution for businesses aiming to provide a high-performance and resilient experience for their users across the globe. Its Anycast IP addresses, dynamic routing, and traffic management features make it a valuable tool for optimizing application delivery. As demonstrated by the global streaming service use case, Global Accelerator can significantly enhance user experiences and streamline content delivery on a global scale. When compared to other AWS services, Global Accelerator’s unique features make it a compelling choice for applications that demand optimal performance and availability and plays a crucial role in shaping the future of digital entertainment.

References and Further Reading:

What is AWS Global Accelerator?