Updated June 16, 2023
Introduction to CloudFront CDN
CloudFront CDN is a content delivery network offered by Amazon web services. Delivery Networks provide distributed networks of proxy servers and caches such as data and videos. A CDN delivers data and applications, and APIs to customers globally with fast speed. CloudFront is integrated with AWS. The Beta version of CloudFront was launched in the year 2008, and Amazon cloud front streaming was launched in the year 2009 year’s end. As its name suggests, CloudFront is based on the “pay as you go” model. As of 2019, Cloud Service operates over 127 edge locations and 11 regional edge caches and near about 63 countries.
Features of CloudFront CDN
CloudFront CDN has several features listed below:
- The CloudFront CDN is globally spread and has around 216 points of presence globally. The network provides high performance and is vastly available for end-users.
- Amazon CloudFront Content delivery network is highly secure and has network and application-level protection. It provides AWS Shield, AWS WAF, and Amazon Route 53, which helps protect against most attacks like DDoS attacks. AWS CloudFront is highly scalable and reliable and provides high-performance security to your content and applications.
- Delivering content and APIs with Amazon CloudFront through SSL/TLS is easier. Here CloudFront provides various features like SSL optimization and HTTPS connections.
- Amazon CloudFront helps you to restrict your content to limited users. We can restrict access to the Amazon S3 bucket using the OAI feature.
- Users can cache the content on CloudFront edge locations globally, reducing the workload and increasing your application’s availability.
- CloudFront helps to set multiple origins and enables redundancy.
- It allows the transmission of requests between cloud front-edge locations and other AWS services.
- It provides a full-featured API to create, configure and maintain cloud-front distributions and DevOps tools.
- CloudFront is cost-effective, where the users pay for their services. It provides free data transfer between CloudFront and cloud services.
- Amazon Cloud Front is highly programmable. APIs allow for the programmable configuration of all features within the CDN.
Advantages of CloudFront CDN
Given below are the advantages mentioned:
- Amazon CloudFront CDN is time-saving. It has a web service interface that reduces workload and ensures high productivity.
- It provides a special feature of content privacy where users, if not interested, can make it private.
- CloudFront helps you detect the geographical location where the users are accessing, which helps promote products and services.
- Amazon CloudFront offers cost savings as it charges based on the actual data transfer utilized, resulting in lower expenses.
Applications of CloudFront CDN
Given below are the applications of CloudFront CDN:
- Media and entertainment platforms like Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Spotify, Prime News, Jio Saavn, Discovery Communications, etc., rely on Amazon CloudFront CDN for their content delivery. Saavn App uses AWS to stream audio and video to millions of global subscribers. Spotify uses Amazon Cloud Front to deliver Spotify applications and software updates to end-users.
- E-commerce applications such as True Car, InstaCart, Amazon Fresh, Vivino, and ArtFinder leverage CloudFront for their operations. ArtFinder, a UK-based startup company, used a cloud front to deliver high bandwidth images from different locations to end-users. TrueCar uses a cloud front for faster delivery of automobile images to users.
- Social media platforms like Slack, Share Chat, Kik, etc., now utilize CloudFront. Oasis.Com is an online dating site that uses Amazon S3 and Amazon cloud front to streamline millions of user images. Slack is a messaging platform that integrates with communication services such as Twitter, GitHub, etc., and uses the cloud front to secure API acceleration.
- Applications of CloudFront are seen in Digital Advertising. Vtex is a software-as-a-service platform containing technologies for retailers to sell online products.
- Financial services companies also make use of Amazon CloudFront. Intuit and intuit mint is a financial management service that uses Amazon Cloud Front for its content delivery.
- CloudFront finds applications in the healthcare sector and enterprises as well.
- Amazon CloudFront in the public sector plays a vital role as it serves as the key point in the growth of the organizations. NOAA (National Oceanic and atmospheric administration) is a public sector organization that predicts changes in climate, oceans, and weather and reports knowledge to others.
- Aerobotics, among other companies, employs Amazon CloudFront’s applications to promote healthier farming.
- In gaming, companies such as Pretty Simple, a gaming studio in France, use Amazon CloudFront to deliver new series to players on tablets, phones, and so on weekly. It mainly lowers the cost of expenditure due to global infrastructure.
- Some educational sector applications use Amazon CloudFront to enhance the learning experience. It delivers content from edge locations to users to reduce end-user workload.
Conclusion
Amazon CloudFront is vital in building organizational growth and improving performance speed, like data transfer between different AWS services and networks. Being familiar with most top-notch organizations, it has gained popularity in serving services starting from Digital advertising, product selling, image content delivery, and several applications transfer. Being the perfect content delivery network service helps in the reliability and availability of spam-free content to its end users.
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