Content Distribution Network — CDN

Creates cached copies of your website at various Edge Locations around the world.

<aside> 💡 If you have an Simple Storage Service — S3 as Origin, private files will give you an AccessDenied

</aside>

Core Components

https://youtu.be/Ia-UEYYR44s?si=J0rc8SUmxMrxITET&t=21966

Origin

The location where all of original files are located. For example an S3 Bucket, EC2 Instance, ELB, or Route53

Distribution

A collection of Edge Locations which defines how cached content should behave.

It replicates copies based on your Price Class

https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/

<aside> 💡 Refreshing does cost money due to transfer costs. By using a lower Price Class, you can reduce your expenses as there will be fewer transfers.

</aside>

two types of Distributions:

1. Web — for websites
2. RTMP — for streaming media

Components:

• Behaviors
  • Redirect to HTTPS
  • Redirect HTTP Methods
  • Restrict Viewer Access
  • Set TTLs
• Invalidations
  • You can manually invalidate cache on specific files
• Error Pages
  • You can serve up custom errors pages, e.g. 404
• Restrictions
  • You can use Geo Restrictions to blacklist or whitelist specific countries.

Edge Location

CloudFront's Edge Locations are the points of presence (PoPs) in the global network where content is cached and delivered to end users. They are distributed around the world and help in achieving faster and more efficient content delivery by reducing latency and improving performance.