AWS Global Accelerator: An Overview

In today’s digital world, users expect fast, reliable, and secure experiences from applications—no matter where they are located. AWS Global Accelerator is a service from Amazon Web Services that helps you achieve exactly that. It improves the availability and performance of your applications with intelligent routing over the AWS global network.

What is AWS Global Accelerator?

AWS Global Accelerator is a networking service that uses the AWS global infrastructure to optimize the path from your users to your applications. Instead of relying on the unpredictable public internet, it routes traffic through AWS’s highly reliable and low-latency private network.

It provides two static IP addresses (or lets you bring your own) and routes user traffic to the optimal endpoint (like EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancers, or Application Load Balancers) based on health, geography, and routing policies.

Key Features

• Static IP Addresses: No matter where your application endpoints are located, Global Accelerator gives you two static IPs, simplifying DNS management and providing a fixed entry point.

• Intelligent Traffic Routing: It automatically directs users to the nearest healthy endpoint to minimize latency and improve performance.

• Health Checks and Automatic Failover: If an endpoint becomes unhealthy, Global Accelerator reroutes traffic to the next best available endpoint without requiring DNS changes.

• Integration with AWS Services: It supports a range of AWS resources like EC2 instances, ALBs (Application Load Balancers), NLBs (Network Load Balancers), and Elastic IP addresses.

• Security: Works with AWS Shield and AWS WAF to provide DDoS protection and application security.

How AWS Global Accelerator Works

1. When you set up Global Accelerator, you configure listeners for specific ports and protocols (like TCP or UDP).

2. You associate these listeners with endpoint groups in different AWS regions.

3. The service monitors the health of these endpoints.

4. When a user makes a request, Global Accelerator routes the request to the nearest healthy endpoint with the best performance using the AWS global network backbone.

This way, users experience faster response times and higher availability—even in the case of regional outages or endpoint failures.

Benefits of AWS Global Accelerator

• Improved Performance: Because it uses AWS’s global backbone, traffic is routed faster and more reliably compared to the public internet.

• High Availability: With automatic failover and health checks, applications remain available even if one or more endpoints fail.

• Simplified Management: Static IPs mean less hassle with DNS updates when endpoints change.

• Global Reach: Easily support a worldwide user base without deploying complex regional infrastructures.

• Increased Security: Integrates with AWS security services to protect your application against common internet threats.

Common Use Cases

• Global Applications: Applications that serve users from multiple regions across the world.

• Disaster Recovery: Quickly rerouting traffic to backup endpoints during failures.

• Gaming: Low-latency routing for online gaming platforms.

• IoT: Fast, reliable connectivity for IoT devices located in different parts of the world.

Practical Example: Testing AWS Global Accelerator with 4 EC2 Instances

Let's take a simple real-world example:

Suppose you have 4 EC2 instances deployed in different AWS regions:

• Instance 1: us-east-1 (N. Virginia)

• Instance 2: eu-west-1 (Ireland)

• Instance 3: ap-southeast-1 (Singapore)

• Instance 4: ap-south-1 (Mumbai)

Each instance runs a basic web server (e.g., Apache or Nginx) that displays the region name like:

"You are connected to US East (N. Virginia)"

Now, without Global Accelerator:

• If a user from India tries to access your service, DNS might randomly resolve to any instance.

• They might end up connecting to Ireland or Virginia, causing higher latency.

With AWS Global Accelerator:

• The Indian user’s traffic will be automatically routed to the Mumbai (ap-south-1) instance, giving them the fastest response.

• A user from Germany will be routed to Ireland (eu-west-1).

• A user from Singapore will connect to the Singapore (ap-southeast-1) instance.

• A user from USA will be directed to the Virginia (us-east-1) instance.

The output when they access the static IP provided by Global Accelerator will be:

This way, AWS Global Accelerator ensures that users are connected to the nearest healthy endpoint, minimizing latency and maximizing user experience.

Bonus: If the Mumbai server goes down, Indian users will automatically be redirected to the next closest healthy server (probably Singapore) without any manual DNS changes!

Conclusion

AWS Global Accelerator is a powerful tool to enhance your application's performance, reliability, and global reach. Whether you are building a global SaaS platform, a multiplayer gaming environment, or a disaster recovery solution, Global Accelerator ensures that your users get the best possible experience—wherever they are.