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A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver webpages and other web content to a user based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and a content delivery server.
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Amazon CloudFront can be used to deliver your entire website, including dynamic, static, streaming, and interactive content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your content are automatically routes to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance.
- Optimized to work with other AWS, like S3, EC2, ELB, Route 53.
- CloudFront also works seamlessly with any non-AWS origin server, which stores the original, definitive versions of your files.
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Edge Location: This is the location where content will be cached. This is separate to an AWS Region/AZ.
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Origin: This is the origin of all the files that the CDN will distribute. This can be either an S3 Bucket, an EC2 Instance, an Elastic Load Balancer or Route53.
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Distribution: This is the name given the CDN which consist of a collection of Edge locations:
- Web Distribution: typically for Websites.
- RTMP: Used for video streaming.
- Edge Locations are not just READ only, you can write to them too (ie put an object on to them).
- Objects are cached for the life of the TTL.
- You can clear cached object, but you will be charged.