What is the AWS Global Accelerator and what are its benefits over Cloudfront
Personal mobile devices and mobile broadband have become increasingly important for accessing and interacting with the Internet. As a result, content providers have directed significant attention to optimizing their sites for the mobile user, often by increasing the number of pages available on a given landing page, or adopting so-called “mobile-friendly” design. The most widely deployed technique to increase the number of pages available is what is known as a “responsive design,” in which the same design is used on PCs, laptops, and tablets, but different content is displayed based on the browser viewport (e.g., a 1×1 or 2×2 grid or even just an empty area see figure 1).
However, designers using a responsive design technique can only optimize the user experience on the device. When viewing content through public networks, particularly public Wi-Fi, many users experience delays in page load time as well as connectivity problems that result in failed requests. The solutions to these problems are not as simple as simply redesigning pages for smaller displays and slower connections; there are other factors at play that can degrade the user’s experience even though all the content is loaded from a single HTML file.
How does the AWS Global Accelerator work
As described above, the AWS Global Accelerator is a content delivery network that optimizes the serving of high-density mobile content. The high-density mobile content can be a single image or image set, or it can be collections of smaller images and files (e.g., CSS, JavaScript, etc.) bundled into reusable “objects.” The benefit of delivering this content through the AWS Global Accelerator is to dramatically improve the performance of mobile sites or apps that deliver a large amount of data over 3G, LTE, and WiFi networks. By using the AWS Global Accelerator, content providers can significantly reduce their download times (e.g., a 6-second page load can be reduced to two seconds) and significantly increase their number of page views. For example, a properly configured site running on the AWS Global Accelerator can experience a 2x to 3x increase in page views compared to the same site with 3G, LTE or WiFi optimization.
Comparing pricing between the two services
The AWS Global Accelerator is priced on a pay-per-request (i.e., per 10,000 requests) usage basis. Prices vary depending on the region of the requester, but cost roughly $0.025 per GB (for images) and roughly $0.008 per GB for the rest of the data objects (e.g., CSS, JavaScript). There is also a tier program for the accelerator called AWS Global Accelerator for Business. It runs on a pay-per-use basis, with prices in the $0.0005 to $0.001 range per GB of throughput (for images) and roughly $0.0001 per GB of other data objects (e.g., CSS, JavaScript). Finally, the CloudFront service has a web performance and progressive downloading feature called Network Optimizer, which is available at no additional cost. It automatically detects images that are below certain resolution thresholds, and if they are not loading in under 5 seconds (with 20 or fewer concurrent connections to the origin), then the image is replaced by a placeholder image. This process is accelerated through the use of Amazon S3, AWS CloudFront and Amazon CloudWatch.
