AWS Certified Solution Architect — Associate: Introduction to CloudFront

What is CDN?

A content delivery network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers(network that deliver webpages and other web content to a user based on the gergraphic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and a content delivery server.

Key Terminology

• Edge Location : This is the location where content will be cached. This is separte to an AWS Region/AZ
• Origin : This is the origin of all the file that the CDN will distribute. This can be either an S3 Bucket, an EC2 Instance, an Elastic Load Balancer or Route53.
• Distribution : This is the name given the CDN which consists of a collection of Edge Locations.

What is CloudFront?

Amazone CloudFront can be used to deliver your entire website, including dynamic, static, streaming, and interactive content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your content are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance.

Some Features

• Edge locations are not just READ only, you can write to them too.
• Objects are cached for the life of the TTL
• You can clear cached objects, but you will be charged.