7. DNS, Caching and Performance Optimization

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AWS Global Accelerator

Last edited 52 days ago by Kirtan Chavda

AWS Global Accelerator is a service in which you create accelerators to improve the performance of your applications for local and global users. Depending on the type of accelerator you choose, you can gain additional benefits:

With a standard accelerator, you can improve availability of your internet applications that are used by a global audience. With a standard accelerator, Global Accelerator directs traffic over the AWS global network to endpoints in the nearest Region to the client.

With a custom routing accelerator, you can map one or more users to a specific destination among many destinations.

Global Accelerator is a global service that supports endpoints in multiple AWS Regions.

By default, Global Accelerator provides you with static IP addresses that you associate with your accelerator. The static IP addresses are anycast from the AWS edge network. For IPv4, Global Accelerator provides two static IPv4 addresses. For dual-stack, Global Accelerator provides a total of four addresses: two static IPv4 addresses and two static IPv6 addresses. For IPv4, instead of using the addresses that Global Accelerator provides, you can configure these entry points to be IPv4 addresses from your own IP address ranges that you bring to Global Accelerator (BYOIP).

Static IP Addresses:

Provides static IP addresses acting as fixed entry points to application endpoints hosted across one or multiple AWS Regions.

Endpoints for standard accelerators can be Network Load Balancers, Application Load Balancers, Amazon EC2 instances, or Elastic IP addresses that are located in one AWS Region or multiple Regions.

Optimized Traffic Routing:

Utilizes the AWS global network to optimize the path from users to application endpoints.

Improves the performance of both TCP and UDP traffic.

Health Monitoring:

Continuously monitors the health of application endpoints.

Detects unhealthy endpoints swiftly and redirects traffic to healthy endpoints in less than 1 minute, ensuring uninterrupted service delivery.

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Details and Benefits of AWS Global Accelerator

Redundant Anycast IP Addresses:

Utilizes two redundant static anycast IP addresses located in different network zones (A and B).

Globally advertised and associated with regional AWS resources or endpoints.

AWS Edge Locations:

Addresses are announced from multiple AWS Edge Locations simultaneously.

Frontend interface for applications.

Intelligent Traffic Distribution:

Routes connections to the closest point of presence for applications, optimizing performance.

Target Types:

Supports Amazon EC2 instances or Elastic Load Balancers (ALB and NLB) as targets.

Simplified Endpoint Management:

No need for client-facing changes or DNS record updates when modifying or replacing endpoints.

IP addresses remain assigned to the accelerator even when disabled, ensuring continuity.

Health Checks:

Performs health checks for TCP connections, ensuring endpoint availability. (not UDP)

Target Weight Assignment:

Allows controlling routing by assigning target weights within a region, enabling fine-grained traffic control.

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Fault Tolerance:

Employs a fault-isolating design, increasing application availability.

Utilizes two IPv4 static addresses serviced by independent network zones, ensuring resilience.

Global Performance-Based Routing:

Utilizes the AWS global network to route TCP and UDP traffic to the closest AWS Region to the user.

Provides instant failover to the next best endpoint in case of application failure.

Continuous Availability Monitoring:

Monitors the health of application endpoints using TCP, HTTP, and HTTPS health checks.

Reacts instantly to changes in endpoint health or configuration, redirecting traffic to healthy endpoints for optimal performance.

Client Affinity:

Enables the building of applications requiring state maintenance.

Supports routing users to the same endpoint consistently for stateful applications.

DDoS Resiliency at the Edge:

Protected by AWS Shield Standard by default, minimizing application downtime and latency from DDoS attacks.

Option to enable AWS Shield Advanced for enhanced detection and mitigation, with access to the AWS DDoS Response Team (DRT) for manual mitigations.

Exam Tips:

AWS Global Accelerator uses static IP addresses as fixed entry points for your application. You can migrate up to two /24 IPv4 address ranges and choose which /32 IP addresses to use when you create your accelerator. Traffic is sent over the AWS global network for consistent performance.

AWS Global Accelerator use cases

Using AWS Global Accelerator can help you accomplish a variety of goals. This section lists some of them, to give you an idea how you can use Global Accelerator to meet your needs.

Scale for increased application utilization

When application usage grows, the number of IP addresses and endpoints that you need to manage also increases. Global Accelerator enables you to scale your network up or down. It lets you associate regional resources, such as load balancers and Amazon EC2 instances, to two static IPv4 addresses or, for dual-stack, to two static IPv4 addresses and two IPv6 addresses. You include these addresses on allow lists just once in your client applications, firewalls, and DNS records. With Global Accelerator, you can add or remove endpoints in AWS Regions, run blue/green deployment, and do A/B testing without having to update the IP addresses in your client applications. This is especially useful for IoT, retail, media, automotive, and healthcare use cases where you can't easily update client applications frequently.

Acceleration for latency-sensitive applications

Many applications, especially in areas such as gaming, media, mobile apps, ad-tech, and financials, require very low latency for a great user experience. To improve the user experience, Global Accelerator directs user traffic to the application endpoint that is nearest to the client, which reduces internet latency and jitter. Global Accelerator routes traffic to the closest edge location by using Anycast, and then routes it to the closest regional endpoint over the AWS global network. Global Accelerator quickly reacts to changes in network performance to improve your users’ application performance.

Disaster recovery and multi-Region resiliency

You must be able to rely on your network to be available. You might be running your application across multiple AWS Regions to support disaster recovery, higher availability, lower latency, or compliance. If Global Accelerator detects that your application endpoint is failing in the primary AWS Region, it instantly triggers traffic re-routing to your application endpoint in the next available, closest AWS Region.For more information about how Global Accelerator supports resiliency inherently and in applications that use the service, read the following blog post:

Maximising application resiliency with AWS Global Accelerator⁠

Protect your applications

Exposing your AWS origins, such as Application Load Balancers or Amazon EC2 instances, to public internet traffic creates an opportunity for malicious attacks. Global Accelerator decreases the risk of attack by masking your origin behind two static entry points. These entry points are protected by default from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks with AWS Shield. Global Accelerator creates a peering connection with your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud using private IP addresses, keeping connections to your internal Application Load Balancers or private EC2 instances off the public internet.

Improve performance for VoIP or online gaming applications

Using a custom routing accelerator, you can leverage the performance benefits of Global Accelerator for your VoIP or gaming applications. For example, you can use Global Accelerator for online gaming applications that assign multiple players to a single gaming session. Use Global Accelerator to reduce latency and jitter globally for applications that require custom logic to map users to specific endpoints, such as multiplayer games or VoIP calls. You can use a single accelerator to connect clients to thousands of Amazon EC2 instances running in a single or multiple AWS Regions, while retaining full control over which client is directed to which EC2 instance and port.

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