Get started with AWS Global Accelerator

AWS Global Accelerator is a network service designed to improve the availability, performance, and reliability of your applications for local and global users. By default, it provides a static IP address that serves as a single entry point to route traffic to multiple AWS endpoints, such as Application Load Balancers (ALBs), Network Load Balancers (NLBs), EC2 instances or Elastic IP address, deployed in one or more AWS Regions.

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The static IP addresses are anycast from the AWS edge network. For IPv4, Global Accelerator provides two static IPv4 addresses.

How It Works

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Global Infrastructure: Global Accelerator leverages the AWS global network to route traffic to the optimal endpoint based on performance metrics such as latency, geography, and endpoint health.
Static IP Addresses: Provides two static IPv4 addresses or the option to use your own IP addresses to route traffic. These are associated with the Global Accelerator and are globally unique.
Health Checks: Continuously monitors the health of endpoints and automatically reroutes traffic to healthy endpoints if an endpoint becomes unavailable.

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Global Accelerator creates a peering connection between your accelerator and a VPC that you created with Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). The traffic between Global Accelerator and your VPC uses private IP addresses.

Use Cases for AWS Global Accelerator

Low-Latency Applications: Applications that require consistent low-latency access, such as gaming platforms or financial services.
Disaster Recovery and High Availability: Helps route traffic to the nearest healthy endpoint in different regions, ensuring high availability.
Multi-Region Deployment: Simplifies routing traffic to applications deployed across multiple regions, providing seamless failover and reducing complexity.
Static IP Addresses for Applications: Useful for applications that need a single fixed IP for whitelisting, compliance, or DNS configurations.
DDoS Mitigation: Integrates with AWS Shield to help protect against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

AWS CloudFront

AWS CloudFront is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service that delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to users globally with low latency and high transfer speeds. It works by caching content in a network of edge locations around the world.

The following diagram illustrates how requests and responses flow through CloudFront edge locations and regional edge caches.

When a viewer makes a request on website or through application, DNS routes the request to the POP (Point of presence or edge location) that can best serve the user’s request. This location is typically the nearest CloudFront edge location in terms of latency. In the POP, CloudFront checks its cache for the requested object. If the object is in the cache, CloudFront returns it to the user. If the object is not in the cache, the POP typically goes to the nearest regional edge cache to fetch it.

Differences Between AWS Global Accelerator and AWS CloudFront

Feature	AWS Global Accelerator	AWS CloudFront
Primary Use Case	Improves global application availability and performance by routing traffic to optimal endpoints.	Accelerates the delivery of static and dynamic web content.
Traffic Routing	Routes traffic to AWS resources (e.g., ALBs, NLBs, EC2, Elastic IPs).	Delivers cached content from edge locations to users.
Caching	No caching functionality.	Provides caching for static and dynamic content.
Static IP Addresses	Provides static IP addresses for global entry points.	Does not provide static IP addresses; works with DNS.
Network Coverage	Uses AWS global network for routing traffic.	Uses edge locations for content delivery.
Application Types	Suitable for applications requiring low-latency access to backends (e.g., multi-region APIs).	Suitable for delivering static and dynamic web assets like images, videos, and HTML.
Latency Optimization	Optimizes latency by routing traffic through the AWS global network.	Reduces latency by caching data at edge locations.

When to Use Which

AWS Global Accelerator:
- For improving latency and availability of backend applications (APIs, web apps).
- When you need static IPs for your applications.
- For multi-region or disaster recovery use cases.
AWS CloudFront:
- For accelerating the delivery of static and dynamic content.
- To improve the performance of websites or media streaming platforms.
- When caching and edge delivery are critical.

Both services complement each other and can often be used together for enhanced global performance and scalability. For example, you might use CloudFront for content delivery and Global Accelerator for application traffic routing.