Amazon CloudFront for CDN

When users access a web application worldwide, every request that hits the origin server—be it an S3 bucket, EC2 instance, or API Gateway endpoint—adds latency and load.

Imagine a user in Sydney requesting an image hosted in an S3 bucket in Ohio. Each request has to travel across continents and back, introducing noticeable delays. At the same time, the origin server carries the burden of handling repeated requests for the same content, which is inefficient and costly.

This is where content delivery networks (CDNs) step in. A CDN is a globally distributed network of edge locations that cache and serve content closer to the user’s location. By offloading static and dynamic content delivery to the edge, CDNs dramatically improve latency, throughput, and reliability while reducing the operational burden on your origin.

Amazon CloudFront is AWS’s native CDN solution, tightly integrated with other AWS services. However, it isn’t just a tool for making websites faster—it’s a critical part of modern cloud architectures. Developers use CloudFront to deliver content with low latency, reduce load on origin servers, and implement intelligent caching and security mechanisms at the edge.

Let’s explore how CloudFront works and how you can effectively deliver high-performance content from custom origins, S3 buckets, and API Gateway endpoints. We’ll also explore how to fine-tune caching behavior and secure content access.

How CloudFront works

At a high level, Amazon CloudFront is a global network of edge locations that work together with the origin and distribution settings to deliver content efficiently. Think of it as a smart delivery system with regional dispatch centers that know when and how to serve packages—except here, the packages are web content.

Let’s break down the core components that make CloudFront function:

1. Origin

Origins ...