CloudFront

• Global service.
• Content Delivery Network (CDN).
• Caching frequently requested content at the edge locations.
• DDoS protection through WAF & Shield.
• Origins¹:
  • S3 Bucket: send² and cache files at the edge locations.
    • Control access with OAC (Origin Access Control).
  • Application Load Balancer.
  • EC2 instance.
  • static websites hosted on S3 .
  • HTTP backend.
• For deleting a distribution you need to first disable it and then wait for being deployed. After that you can delete it permanently.

How it works

S3 as an origin

S3 replication VS CloudFront caching

CloudFront	S3 cross region replication
Utilizes global edge network of AWS.	Needs to be configured for each region.
Caches have TTL3.	Files are replicated (not cached).
Good for static content.	Good for dynamic content.

Footnotes

1. An origin is the location where content is stored, and from which CloudFront gets content to serve to viewers. ↩

2. It is called ingres. ↩

3. Time To Live. ↩