AWS CloudFront
By Amazon Web Services
AWS CloudFront is Amazon Web Services' content delivery network (CDN) that caches and serves content from edge locations around the world, reducing latency for end users and offloading traffic from origin servers.
Definition
AWS CloudFront is Amazon Web Services' content delivery network (CDN) that caches and serves content from edge locations around the world, reducing latency for end users and offloading traffic from origin servers.
Overview
CloudFront, launched in 2008, is AWS's answer to the CDN category, distributing static and dynamic content from a global network of edge locations so that requests are served from a point of presence near the requesting user rather than always traveling back to an origin server. Common origins include Amazon S3 buckets for static assets, EC2 or load-balanced application servers for dynamic content, and even non-AWS origins. Beyond simple caching, CloudFront integrates with several other AWS services to add programmable behavior at the edge: Lambda@Edge and CloudFront Functions let developers run lightweight code — rewriting URLs, checking headers, personalizing responses — at edge locations before a request reaches the origin or a cached response is returned. CloudFront also integrates with AWS IAM for access control on private content, AWS Certificate Manager for free TLS certificates, and AWS Shield/WAF for DDoS and application-layer protection. As one of the foundational services covered in the AWS Core Services curriculum, CloudFront is frequently paired with S3 for static website hosting, with Route 53 for DNS, and with API Gateway or load balancers for accelerating dynamic APIs, making it a common building block in most production AWS architectures.
Key Features
- Global network of edge locations for low-latency content delivery
- Supports both static content caching and dynamic content acceleration
- Lambda@Edge and CloudFront Functions for programmable edge logic
- Native integration with Amazon S3, EC2, and load balancers as origins
- Free TLS certificates via integration with AWS Certificate Manager
- Signed URLs and cookies for controlling access to private content
- Integration with AWS Shield and AWS WAF for security protection
- Detailed real-time and historical analytics on cache performance