Amazon CloudFront

Last updated
Amazon CloudFront
AWS Simple Icons Content Delivery Amazon CloudFront Streaming Distribution.svg
Type of site
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Owner Amazon
URL aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/ OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
IPv6 supportYes
RegistrationRequired
LaunchedNovember 18, 2008;15 years ago (2008-11-18)

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) operated by Amazon Web Services. The content delivery network was created to provide a globally-distributed network of proxy servers to cache content, such as web videos or other bulky media, more locally to consumers, to improve access speed for downloading the content.

Contents

CloudFront has servers located in the United Kingdom, Ireland, The Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Australia, South America, Africa, and several major cities in the United States. In November 2022, the service operated from 400 edge locations on six continents. [1]

CloudFront operates on a pay-as-you-go basis.

CloudFront competes with larger CDNs, such as Akamai, Azion, Cloudflare, and Edgio (previously known as Limelight Networks). Upon launch, Larry Dignan of ZDNet News stated that CloudFront could cause price and margin reductions for competing CDNs. [2]

Timeline

Amazon CloudFront edge locations

In October 2018, Amazon CloudFront consisted of 138 access points (127 edge locations and 11 regional edge caches) in 63 cities across 29 countries. [4]

Logs

CloudFront allows users to enable or disable logging. If enabled, the logs are stored on Amazon S3 buckets which can then be analyzed. These logs contain useful information like:

These logs can be analyzed by using third-party tools such as S3Stat, Cloudlytics, Qloudstat, or AWStats.[ citation needed ]

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References

  1. "Amazon CloudFront Product Details". Amazon.com. Archived from the original on 2022-11-18. Retrieved November 20, 2022. To deliver content to end users with lower latency, Amazon CloudFront uses a global network of 410+ Points of Presence (400+ Edge locations and 13 regional mid-tier caches) in 90+ cities across 48 countries.
  2. Larry Dignan (November 18, 2008). "Amazon launches CloudFront; Content delivery network margins go kaboom". Between the Lines. ZDNet. Archived from the original on 2014-10-22. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  3. "AWS Free Usage Tier Now Includes Amazon CloudFront". Archived from the original on 2016-06-17. Retrieved 2018-12-10.
  4. "Key Features of a Content Delivery Network| Performance, Security | Amazon CloudFront". October 18, 2018. Archived from the original on 2018-10-18.