Global Accelerator

Question 1

What is AWS Global Accelerator and how is it used

Answer 1

AWS Global Accelerator is a networking service that improves the availability and performance of your applications for global users by directing traffic to optimal endpoints over the AWS internal global network

AWS Global Accelerator assigns 2 Anycast static IPs for each of your application’s accelerators and are used to send traffic directly to Edge Locations. The Edge Locations send the traffic to your application. Ensuring that client traffic is routed to the nearest edge location within AWS network for minimal latency and optimal performance.

Question 2

Does AWS Global Accelerator perform a health check

Answer 2

Global Accelerator continuously monitors the health of your endpoints by sending health checks from AWS edge locations. If an endpoint becomes unhealthy due to failure or degradation, Global Accelerator automatically reroutes traffic to healthy endpoints, helping to minimize downtime and maintain application availability. Failover is less than 1 minute

Question 3

What services does AWS Global Accelerator integrate with

Answer 3

Global Accelerator integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, including Amazon EC2 instances, Application Load Balancers, Network Load Balancers, and Elastic IP addresses. You can use Global Accelerator to front-end your application endpoints, improving their availability and performance without requiring changes to your application code.

Question 4

Does AWS Global Accelerator support Client IP Address Preservation

Answer 4

Yes, Static IP Addresses: Global Accelerator provides you with a pair of static anycast IP addresses that act as entry points to your application. When clients connect to your application through Global Accelerator, their requests are received by AWS edge locations closest to them.

Forwarding Client IP Address: Global Accelerator forwards the original client IP address along with the incoming requests to your endpoints. This allows your application to see the actual IP addresses of the clients making requests, rather than the IP addresses of the edge locations.

Question 5

What security features does AWS Global Accelerator have

Answer 5

You only need to whitelist 2 external IPs

Encryption: Global Accelerator supports encryption of client-to-accelerator and accelerator-to-endpoint traffic using SSL/TLS protocols.

DDoS Protection: AWS Global Accelerator includes built-in DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) protection to safeguard your applications against large-scale, volumetric DDoS attacks. It leverages AWS Shield

Question 6

What is the difference between cloudfront vs global accelerator

Answer 6

CloudFront: CloudFront is designed to deliver static and dynamic content (such as web pages, images, videos, and APIs)
Global Accelerator: Global Accelerator is a networking service that optimizes the routing of TCP and UDP traffic to improve the availability and performance of your applications for global users.

CloudFront: CloudFront optimizes content delivery by caching content at edge locations and serving it from the nearest edge location to end-users, reducing latency and improving the user experience.
Global Accelerator: Global Accelerator optimizes traffic routing by using the AWS global network to direct traffic along the fastest and most reliable path to your application endpoints.