AWS: Comparison Study of AWS Global Accelerator & Amazon CloudFront
In this very first blog on AWS, I would like bring out the differences/comparison between AWS Global Accelerator & Amazon CloudFront.
I will bring out the key features, primary usecases of each of them and then key differences between them.
Also, at the end I will bring out the commonalities among them.
Let’s start with the definitions and their working (how it works).
AWS Global Accelerator
AWS Global Accelerator is a service in which you create accelerators to improve the performance of your applications for local and global users.
It supports endpoints (regional) in multiple AWS Regions. These regional endpoint are DNS names that resolve to the IP addresses of the service endpoints located within the specified AWS region.
Types of Accelerators
Standard Accelerator: You can improve availability of your internet applications that are used by a global audience. Global Accelerator directs traffic over the AWS global network to endpoints in the nearest Region to the client.
Custom Routing Accelerator: You can map one or more users to a specific destination among many destinations.
How it works?
The static IP addresses provided by AWS Global Accelerator serve as single fixed entry points for your clients. When you set up your accelerator, you associate the static IP addresses to regional endpoints in one or more AWS Regions.
- For standard accelerators, the endpoints are Network Load Balancers, Application Load Balancers, Amazon EC2 instances, or Elastic IP addresses.
- For custom routing accelerators, the endpoints are virtual private cloud (VPC) subnets with one or more EC2 instances.
The static IP addresses accept incoming traffic onto the AWS global network from the edge location that is closest to your users.
Edge locations are AWS data centers designed to deliver services with the lowest latency possible. They’re closer to users than Regions or Availability Zones, often in major cities, so responses can be fast and snappy.
From the edge location, traffic for your application is routed based on the type of accelerator that you configure.
- For standard accelerators, traffic is routed to the optimal AWS endpoint based on several factors, including the user’s location, the health of the endpoint, and the endpoint weights that you configure.
- For custom routing accelerators, each client is routed to a specific Amazon EC2 instance and port in a VPC subnet, based on the external static IP address and listener port that you provide.
Key features
Performance Improvement: Can improve network performance for your applications by up to 60%.
Static IP Addresses: Provides static Anycast IPs that route user requests to the optimal AWS endpoint based on health, geography, and routing policies.
Region Failover: Enables automatic failover to second-best AWS region without changing DNS records, thereby delivering high available (HA) applications.
Non-HTTP Use Cases: Suitable for raw TCP/UDP traffic, so works well for non-web applications like gaming, VOIP, and IoT.
AWS Endpoint Compatibility: Can route traffic to multiple types of AWS endpoints like EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancers (ELBs), and even services like RDS.
Protection against DDoS Attacks: Can protect your applications from DDoS attacks closer to the source.
Primary Use Cases
Global traffic manager: Use traffic dials to route traffic to the nearest Region or achieve fast failover across Regions.
API acceleration: Accelerate API workloads by up to 60%, leveraging TCP termination at the edge.
Global static IP: Simplify allowlisting in enterprise firewalling and IoT use cases.
Low-latency gaming and media workloads: Use custom routing to deterministically route traffic to a fleet of EC2 instances.
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront is a service that speeds up distribution of your static and dynamic web content, such as .html, .css, .js, and image files, to your users. It delivers your content through a worldwide network of data centers called edge locations.
How it works?
After you configure CloudFront to deliver your content, here’s what happens when users request your objects:
- A user accesses your website or application and sends a request for an object, such as an image file or an HTML file.
- DNS routes the request to the CloudFront POP (edge location) that can best serve the request — typically the nearest CloudFront POP in terms of latency — and routes the request to that edge location.
- CloudFront checks its cache for the requested object. If the object is in the cache, CloudFront returns it to the user. If the object is not in the cache, CloudFront does the following:
a. CloudFront compares the request with the specifications in your distribution and forwards the request to your origin server for the corresponding object — for example, to your Amazon S3 bucket or your HTTP server.
b. The origin server sends the object back to the edge location.
c. As soon as the first byte arrives from the origin, CloudFront begins to forward the object to the user. CloudFront also adds the object to the cache for the next time someone requests it.
Key features
HTTP/HTTPS Acceleration: Optimized for web traffic, improving performance and reducing latency by caching content closer to the user.
Content Caching: Cache static resources at edge locations and has features for invalidating cache as well.
Lambda@Edge: Run Lambda functions at edge locations for content transformation, authentication, etc.
DDoS Protection and WAF Integration: Integrated with AWS WAF, Shield and Route 53 for enhanced security features like DDoS protection.
Custom Domains and SSL: Supports custom domain names and SSL/TLS certificates.
Cost cutting: Cut costs with consolidated requests, customizable pricing options, and zero fees for data transfer out from AWS origins.
Primary Use Cases
Deliver fast, secure websites: Reach viewers across the globe in milliseconds with built-in data compression, edge compute capabilities, and field-level encryption.
Accelerate dynamic content delivery and APIs: Optimize dynamic web content delivery with the purpose-built and feature-rich AWS global network infrastructure supporting edge termination and WebSockets.
Stream live and on-demand video: Start streams quickly, play them with consistency, and deliver high-quality video to any device with AWS Media Service and AWS Elemental integration.
Distribute patches and updates: Scale automatically to deliver software, game patches, and IoT over-the-air (OTA) updates at scale with high transfer rates.
Key Differences
Layer of Operation: Global Accelerator works at the Network Layer (Layer 4) while CloudFront works at the Application Layer (Layer 7).
Traffic Types: Global Accelerator is not limited to HTTP/HTTPS traffic and can handle generic TCP/UDP traffic. CloudFront is optimized for HTTP/HTTPS.
Caching: CloudFront has extensive caching features for optimizing web content delivery, which Global Accelerator doesn’t offer.
Failover: Global Accelerator can reroute traffic for quick failover across regions, whereas CloudFront is more oriented towards distributing web content from a primary location with edge caching.
Fine-grained Control: CloudFront offers more fine-grained control for HTTP headers, redirects, and other Layer 7 features, including running Lambda functions at edge locations.
Security Features: CloudFront has built-in features like AWS WAF integration for application-level security, while Global Accelerator focuses more on availability and reliability.
Pricing: With Global Accelerator, you are charged a fixed hourly fee for each accelerator that is provisioned in your account (whether it’s enabled or disabled), and an incremental charge, in addition to standard data transfer rates, for every hour of traffic in the dominant direction that flows through the accelerator. With CloudFront, you don’t have to pay any up-front fees or commit to how much content you’ll have. As with the other AWS services, you pay as you go and pay only for what you use.
Commonalities
- Both use the AWS global network and its edge locations around the globle
- Both integrate with AWS Shield for DDoS protection.
Conclusion
This is just an attempt to clear the confusion you might have between Global Accelerator & CloudFront (which I myself had, initially) - how are they different, how they work, etc.
Hope you find this article helpful in understanding the concepts of 2 important services of AWS.
Thank you for reading!! Please don’t forget to like, share and also feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.
