CloudFront
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
CloudFront is AWS's CDN — it copies your files to data centers all over the world so users get content from a server near them instead of one far away. A user in Tokyo gets your images from Tokyo, not Virginia. It makes your site faster and cheaper to serve at scale.
Real Talk
Amazon CloudFront is a CDN that delivers content from 400+ edge locations globally. It caches static assets, streams video, and can run Lambda@Edge and CloudFront Functions for dynamic logic at the edge. Integrates natively with S3, EC2, ALB, and API Gateway.
Show Me The Code
# Invalidate CloudFront cache after deployment
aws cloudfront create-invalidation \
--distribution-id EDFDVBD6EXAMPLE \
--paths "/static/*" "/index.html"
When You'll Hear This
"We serve the S3 bucket through CloudFront for global performance." / "After deployment, remember to invalidate the CloudFront cache."
Related Terms
AWS (Amazon Web Services)
AWS is like a giant magical warehouse where you can rent computers, storage, databases, and basically anything tech-related — by the minute.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is how wide your internet pipe is — how much data can flow through per second. A narrow pipe means slow speeds, a wide pipe means fast speeds.
CDN (Content Delivery Network)
A CDN is a network of servers spread around the world that store copies of your files.
Edge Computing
Your server is in Virginia. Your user is in Tokyo. Every request travels 10,000 km and back.
Edge Function
Edge functions run your code at the CDN edge — meaning close to the user, not in some faraway data center.
Latency
Latency is the delay before data starts moving — the time it takes for a request to go from your device to the server and back.