Amazon CloudFront Specialization

Static Content Delivery Acceleration

One of the key factors to enhance the experience on a website is to serve all static content, such as JavaScript, stylesheets, fonts, images, and videos, with the lowest possible latency.

By using CloudFront, all your static content is served from the nearest EDGE, reducing network traffic to your servers and improving overall performance.

In this scenario, it is possible to see that even when the latency between the end client and the server is 1000ms, static content can be served with average latencies of 50ms.

Dynamic Content Delivery Acceleration

With the increasingly widespread use of websites using HTTPS, the time required to establish a connection with servers has also increased (due to the HTTPS handshake protocol). Therefore, reducing latency between the end client and the server has become more necessary.

In the scenario below, it can be observed that without the use of CloudFront, each user ends up spending the same amount of time to establish communication with the server.

After implementing Amazon CloudFront and configuring it for dynamic content acceleration, the first client will take the same time. However, subsequent clients will experience superior performance as the connection between CloudFront and the server is reused.

Image Optimization Using AWS Lambda Edge

Often, websites and content management systems do not optimize images properly.

By optimizing images using AWS Lambda Edge, all the complexity related to optimization is handled by the CDN itself. It identifies images that can be optimized, performs the optimization process, and stores the optimized image for future use.

It can even transform JPG files into standard WEBP files to further reduce loading time and network traffic. In some scenarios, we can optimize image size by more than 80%.

Cache Parameter Optimization

Frequently, e-commerce systems and websites do not configure cache parameters properly, and despite being relatively simple, the team maintaining it often lacks the authority to do so.

After making these adjustments, on the first visit by the end customer, performance is close to the original. However, on a second visit, resources that would be loaded again are delivered from the browser's local cache, drastically reducing load time and network consumption.

Online Video Streaming

AWS provides a live streaming solution that combines AWS Elemental MediaLive and AWS Elemental MediaStore with Amazon CloudFront to create a highly resilient and scalable architecture that delivers your live content worldwide.

The following diagram presents the architecture of live streaming video that can be used as a reference for deployment and customization of solutions.

Private Content Delivery

It is also possible to obtain the benefits of static content acceleration, dynamic content acceleration, online video streaming, and image optimization for private content.

The operation is quite simple and practical; just generate a signed cookie after your users log in and protect the CloudFront distribution. The cookie can last as long as necessary, and renewal can be done transparently within your application.

With the cookie, all privately available content can be accessed without the need for additional configurations.