CDN CloudFront
10 Jun 2015

All You Need To Know About CDN CloudFront

Many businesses over the globe now days use the CDN technology to improve an interconnection with their customers. CDNs or Content Delivery Networks are large distributed systems of servers around the world. They are deployed in data centers across the Internet to improve data delivery. Due to the CDN, the end user gets requested data faster. The mechanism of this technology can be simply described as follows. Data is stored not only on the main server, but on a number of CDN servers, too. Such servers are distributed over the globe to be closer to the end user. When user requests for some data the first time, he or she gets it from the main server. But the second time this data will be loaded from the nearest CDN server. Surely, it is just a simple explanation. In fact, CDN communications have a lot of settings. As well as their use has a lot of secrets and distinctions.

One of the most popular services, that provide CDN, is CDN CloudFront. The service was launched in 2008 year and now has a big amount of partners and customers all over the world. It integrates with other web services to get to the best result of content delivering. CloudFront now based on fifty-two POPs (Points of Presence) all over the world. Twenty of them are in North America, sixteen – in Europe. The other POPs are located mainly in Asia and Pacific. When website starts using the CloudFront, selected data immediately goes to their edge locations. This makes data geographically close to the end users and gives them much faster access to it. Surely, everything has its cost, and every extra traffic through the CDN server will return to extra fees for online business. The most significant costs can be generated by very active files or big files. That is why it is very important to correctly select data, that will go over the CDN.

It is better to select files for CloudFronton the basis of economy/efficiency principle. If speed delivery matters for concrete data more than economy, than such data should go over the CDN. Here can be mentioned such types of files as JavaScript, images, and CSS files. These files are small and they needed to be loaded quickly. However, they will not make a lot of traffic through a CDN and will not bring many extra fees. That makes them cost-effective to distribute over the CloudFront. Again, using CloudFront for such files can provide big changes in performance. Cloudfront provides service ‘pay as you go’. That means that customers will pay only for traffic that they actually use. The price is quite big, comparing with the competitors – from $60 for 500 GB to 4400 for 50 TB. For example, CDNsun Company propose prices $20 for 500 GB and $1600 for 50 TB and provides ‘pay as you go’ service, too.

Thereby, CloudFront can be very useful for online business, when used correctly.  Files for CDN cloud should be selected based on economy/efficiency principle. Cloudfront is best suited for small and static files – JavaScript, images, and CSS files. This service works since 2008 year and has more than fifty points of presence over globe.