Amazon CloudFront is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). That might sound technical, but here’s what it really means:
CloudFront is a service that makes websites and apps load faster—especially when people are visiting them from different parts of the world. It works by bringing your website’s content closer to your users through a network of servers located all around the globe.
Imagine your website is like a book. Normally, you keep the only copy in one library (say, in Delhi). Every time someone wants to read that book—even if they’re in Japan or South Africa—they have to get it from Delhi. That takes time.
CloudFront solves this by making copies of your book and storing them in many local libraries (servers) around the world. Now when someone wants the book, they just get it from the closest library.
So instead of your content taking a long road trip, it takes a short flight.
AddOns: A CDN, or Content Delivery Network, is a system of servers located all around the world that helps deliver websites and online content faster and more reliably to people no matter where they are.
It’s like setting up mini-warehouses all over the globe so your products (in this case, your website content) are always close to your customers (your users), instead of shipping everything from just one big warehouse far away.
What Kind of Content Does CloudFront Handle?
CloudFront is designed to speed up all types of web content, including:
Static content – Files that don’t change often, like images (.jpg, .png), stylesheets (.css), and JavaScript files (.js).
Dynamic content – Personalized content like user dashboards, news feeds, or content that changes based on the user.
Videos and audio – Streaming or downloadable media.
APIs – If your site or app uses back-end services or APIs (for example, to fetch data), CloudFront can help with that too.
What Are Edge Locations?
The heart of CloudFront’s speed lies in its edge locations. These are Amazon servers located in major cities and strategic spots around the world.
Let’s say you’re hosting a website with files stored in a server in Delhi, India. Someone from Germany visits your site. Instead of sending the request all the way to India and back, CloudFront serves the content from an edge server in Europe—much closer, much faster.
Amazon has hundreds of these edge locations globally, so most users are never far from one.
What Happens When Someone Visits Your Site?
Let’s break down what actually happens behind the scenes when a user tries to access your site with CloudFront:
- User types in your website address or clicks a link. Their request goes to the nearest CloudFront edge location.
- If CloudFront has a copy of the content (like an image or webpage) stored at that edge location, it sends it right away.
- If CloudFront doesn’t have the content yet, it goes to your original server (called the origin) to fetch the file.
- CloudFront sends the file to the user, and stores a copy at the edge location so the next person nearby can get it instantly.
What Is an Origin Server?
The origin is where your original, “master” version of your website files live. You tell CloudFront where this is.
It could be:
- An Amazon S3 bucket (Amazon’s online storage service)
- A custom server that you manage, like a regular web hosting service or an Amazon EC2 server
- A video stream from AWS MediaPackage
- An API Gateway or a load balancer for your app
Whatever the case, CloudFront only contacts the origin when needed—and then caches (saves) the content in its edge servers to use again later.
Setting Up CloudFront –
1. Upload Your Files
Put your images, videos, HTML files, etc., in a location like Amazon S3 or your web server. These files are called objects.
2. Create a CloudFront Distribution
A “distribution” is just a fancy word for the setup that tells CloudFront:
- Where your content is stored (your origin)
- How you want it delivered (settings)
- Whether you want logging, access control, etc.
- When you create it, CloudFront gives you a special web address like:
d12345abcde.cloudfront.net
You can use this as your website URL, or connect it to your custom domain like:
www.yourwebsite.com
3. Configure Caching Behavior
You can tell CloudFront how long to keep files in its edge servers before checking for updates. This is called cache expiration.
- Default is 24 hours
- Minimum is 0 seconds (meaning it always checks your origin)
- You can also set custom rules for different types of files
This helps you balance speed with freshness. For example, you may want to cache images for days but check for new HTML content more often.
4. Access Control (Optional)
You can decide who gets to see your content:
- Make files public so anyone can access them
- Keep them private, and use things like signed URLs or cookies to give access only to specific users
- Great for paid content, member-only areas, or secure downloads.
How Does Pricing Work?
CloudFront pricing is based on:
- Data transfer out: You pay for the amount of data sent from CloudFront edge locations to your users.
- Requests: You pay based on the number of times someone requests a file (via HTTP or HTTPS).
- Location: Prices vary depending on where your users are. For example, serving content to India may cost less than serving it to Europe or South America.
Features: Some advanced features (like real-time logs or Lambda@Edge functions) might add to the cost.
Free Stuff:
Data transfer from your origin (like Amazon S3) to CloudFront is free.
There’s a free tier for low-traffic websites: 1 TB of data transfer per month for 1 year.
So in many cases, CloudFront only costs you when someone actually views your content.