Edge networking with AWS
AWS edge networking services transmit your user-facing data securely and with improved latency worldwide. By moving traffic off the internet and behind the defenses of the world’s most secure cloud provider you limit your exposure to attack by encrypting data, removing network hops, and controlling application access. Networking services Amazon CloudFront, AWS Global Accelerator, and Amazon Route 53 sit at AWS’ global edge locations connected by dedicated 100Gbps redundant fiber to deliver data with single digit millisecond AWS network latency.
AWS Free Tier includes 50GB data transfer out, 2,000,000 HTTP and HTTPS Requests, and 2,000,000 CloudFront Functions invocations. Get started with Amazon CloudFront.
Benefits
Security
Secure your edge networking workloads on AWS through comprehensive perimeter protection layered with networking traffic encryption and access controls. AWS Shield Standard defends traffic transmitted through an AWS edge location from DDoS and malicious web attacks at no additional charge to you. For application protection, you can integrate AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) using your own rules or leverage Managed Rules for AWS WAF, a pre-configured set of rules managed by AWS or AWS Marketplace Sellers.
Performance
AWS enables you to improve your application performance by providing access to dispersed and connected infrastructure through global multi-service Points of Presence (PoPs). AWS PoPs have the full AWS edge networking service stack at each location with caching, network connectivity, edge compute, and perimeter protection. These 450+ global PoPs are connected by AWS Global Infrastructure’s redundant 100Gbps dedicated fibers providing single-digit millisecond network latency between applications in an AWS Region and edge locations.
Ease of use
Work in a familiar environment with industry leading AWS integration. AWS edge networking services can be setup in minutes within the AWS management console manually, with 1-click acceleration, or by following AWS SDKs. Benefit from native integration with AWS resources and a community of builders working together using the same tools.
Cost savings
Delivering data through edge locations reduces your application costs by limiting and consolidating requests. Any cache-able data transferred to AWS edge locations from an AWS resources incurs no additional charge. All AWS edge networking services are pay as you go, with no upfront costs, and no minimum usage. Customers willing to make a long term commitment can sign-up for self-service discounts, such as the CloudFront savings bundle.
Use cases
Customizable content delivery networking
You can customize web content delivery using Amazon CloudFront to improve latency and protect your applications. CloudFront is a fast content delivery network (CDN) that supports website, video, API, and file caching. Serving traffic from globally distributed AWS edge locations, CloudFront consolidates and encrypts requests sent back to your application origins. You can insert your own code to tailor content based on customer profiles and devices at the edge using CloudFront’s serverless compute features CloudFront Functions and Lambda@Edge. CloudFront’s edge compute capabilities integrate with security services AWS Shield and AWS Web Application Firewall enabling you to build comprehensive perimeter protection to defend against DDoS and bad bot attacks.
Global network traffic acceleration
Limited bandwidth on public networks and spikes in network traffic result in slowed or lost connections and dropped data. You can solve this by using AWS Global Accelerator to move network traffic onto AWSs’ congestion-free private network infrastructure. Global Accelerator improves network traffic performance by up to 60% and causes up to 40% fewer dropped packets. If you are serving traffic globally from a single region, using AWS Global Accelerator improves performance, providing a low-cost and simple to setup alternative to replicating applications in multiple AWS Regions for ultra-high availability and performance. JoyCity implemented Global Accelerator instead of redesigning their applications for multi-Region deployment and saw all game traffic improve by over 43% along with 1/8th the timeouts.
Reliable network routing and traffic management
End-user latency and failed connections can be caused by inefficiencies in network traffic routed between devices and your applications as they initiate and maintain communication. You can address this by using Amazon Route 53 and AWS Global Accelerator to route and manage network traffic. Route 53 is a highly scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web service that translates website names into IP addresses (i.e. example.com into 192.0.2.1) enabling internet communication. Using Route 53 Traffic Flow you can optimize network traffic based on performance, geographical proximity to an AWS resource, or weight distribution across resources for failover and workload migrations - helping your applications initiate and maintain performant connections. AWS Global Accelerator further increases performance and simplifies traffic routing by providing two static customer facing IPs. On the back end, Global Accelerator allows traffic rerouting along the AWS backbone without customer facing address changes or downtime.
Resources
Latest resources
Latest resources
Getting started
Start building with edge networking services in the AWS console.