Global Accelerator

CloudFront vs Global Accelerator – CDN vs Anycast

AWS CloudFront vs Global Accelerator
~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil

AWS CloudFront vs Global Accelerator

  • Global Accelerator and CloudFront both use the AWS global network and its edge locations around the world.
  • Both services integrate with AWS Shield for DDoS protection.
  • Both services operate from AWS edge locations (Points of Presence), but with different scale:
    • CloudFront uses 750+ PoPs in 100+ cities across 50+ countries, plus 1,140+ Embedded PoPs in 300+ cities.
    • Global Accelerator uses 130 PoPs in 95 cities across 53 countries.
  • Performance
    • CloudFront improves performance for both cacheable content (such as images and videos) and dynamic content (such as API acceleration and dynamic site delivery).
    • Global Accelerator improves performance for a wide range of applications over TCP or UDP by proxying packets at the edge to applications running in one or more AWS Regions.
  • Use Cases
    • CloudFront is a good fit for HTTP use cases, including web content delivery, API acceleration, video streaming, and serverless edge compute.
    • Global Accelerator is a good fit for non-HTTP use cases, such as gaming (UDP), IoT (MQTT), or VoIP, as well as for HTTP use cases that require static IP addresses or deterministic, fast regional failover.
  • Caching
    • CloudFront supports Edge caching with Regional Edge Caches (RECs) and Origin Shield for optimized cache-hit ratios.
    • Global Accelerator does not support Edge Caching. It routes traffic over the AWS backbone to the optimal regional endpoint.
  • Static IP Addresses
    • CloudFront now supports Anycast Static IPs (launched Nov 2024), providing a dedicated set of static IP addresses for allowlisting, zero-rating, and apex domain support.
    • Global Accelerator provides two static anycast IPv4 addresses (and optionally two IPv6 addresses with dual-stack) per accelerator, serviced by independent network zones for fault tolerance.
  • Protocol Support
    • CloudFront supports HTTP and HTTPS (with TLSv1.3), WebSocket, and gRPC.
    • Global Accelerator supports TCP and UDP at the transport layer, enabling broader protocol coverage including non-HTTP workloads.
  • Failover
    • CloudFront supports origin failover for GET and HEAD requests using origin groups with primary and secondary origins.
    • Global Accelerator provides instant, deterministic failover across AWS Regions based on continuous health monitoring (TCP, HTTP, HTTPS health checks).
  • Edge Compute
    • CloudFront offers edge compute via CloudFront Functions (lightweight, sub-millisecond execution at all edge locations) and Lambda@Edge (general-purpose serverless compute).
    • Global Accelerator does not provide edge compute capabilities.
  • IP Address Management
    • CloudFront supports Bring Your Own IP (BYOIP) through VPC IPAM integration for both IPv4 (/24) and IPv6 (/48) address ranges (launched Nov 2025).
    • Global Accelerator supports BYOIP allowing up to two /24 IPv4 address ranges per accelerator.
  • Security
    • CloudFront integrates with AWS WAF, AWS Shield (Standard and Advanced), and supports field-level encryption, signed URLs/cookies, and Origin Access Control (OAC).
    • Global Accelerator integrates with AWS Shield (Standard and Advanced) for DDoS protection but does not support WAF integration.

Key Feature Differences (Summary Table)

Feature CloudFront Global Accelerator
Type Content Delivery Network (CDN) Network layer traffic accelerator
Caching Yes (Edge + Regional Edge Caches + Origin Shield) No
Protocols HTTP, HTTPS, WebSocket, gRPC TCP, UDP
Static IPs Yes (Anycast Static IPs – Nov 2024) Yes (2 IPv4 + 2 IPv6 with dual-stack)
Edge Compute CloudFront Functions + Lambda@Edge No
WAF Integration Yes No
VPC Origins Yes (private ALB/NLB/EC2) No
Custom Routing No Yes (deterministic EC2 routing)
Health Checks Origin failover (GET/HEAD only) TCP, HTTP, HTTPS (instant regional failover)
Dual-Stack (IPv6) Yes Yes (dual-stack accelerators with NLB endpoints)
BYOIP Yes (via VPC IPAM, IPv4 + IPv6) Yes (up to two /24 IPv4 ranges)
Kubernetes Integration No native integration Yes (AWS Load Balancer Controller CRDs)

Recent Feature Updates (2024-2026)

CloudFront Updates

  • Anycast Static IPs (Nov 2024) – Dedicated static IP addresses for allowlisting, zero-rating traffic with ISPs, and apex domain support. IPv6 support added Nov 2025.
  • VPC Origins (Nov 2024) – Connect CloudFront directly to private ALBs, NLBs, or EC2 instances in private subnets without public internet exposure. Cross-account support added Nov 2025.
  • Embedded Points of Presence (Feb 2024) – PoPs deployed directly within ISP networks for large-scale video streaming and game downloads, with 1,140+ Embedded PoPs in 300+ cities.
  • Flat-Rate Pricing Plans (Nov 2025) – Bundled CDN, WAF, DDoS protection, bot management, Route 53, CloudWatch Logs, edge compute, and S3 storage into predictable monthly pricing with no overage charges.
  • Tag-Based Cache Invalidation (May 2026) – Native support to tag cached objects and invalidate by tag directly through the CloudFront API.
  • BYOIP via VPC IPAM (Nov 2025) – Bring your own IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to CloudFront using IPAM’s BYOIP for global services.
  • CloudFront KeyValueStore (Nov 2023) – Low-latency global data store for CloudFront Functions enabling dynamic edge decisions without code redeployment.
  • Simplified Console Experience (Jun 2025) – New user-friendly interface with automated certificate provisioning and DNS configuration.

Global Accelerator Updates

  • Kubernetes Integration (Jan 2026) – AWS Load Balancer Controller now supports Global Accelerator through declarative Kubernetes CRDs for managing accelerators, listeners, and endpoint groups.
  • Expanded Region Support – Now supports 33 AWS Regions including Mexico (Central), Asia Pacific (Malaysia, Thailand, Taipei) as of Oct 2025.
  • Dual-Stack NLB Endpoints (Nov 2023) – IPv6 traffic routing directly to dual-stack NLB endpoints for end-to-end IPv6 connectivity.
  • Client IP Preservation for NLB (Aug 2023) – Maintains source IP address for packets arriving at NLB endpoints configured behind Global Accelerator.
  • Dual-Stack NLB Support for Standard Accelerators (Mar 2024) – Adding dual-stack NLBs to standard accelerators.

When to Use Which

  • Choose CloudFront when:
    • Delivering cacheable web content (images, videos, static files)
    • Accelerating APIs and dynamic HTTP/HTTPS content
    • Needing edge compute (CloudFront Functions or Lambda@Edge)
    • Requiring WAF integration for application-layer security
    • Serving content from private origins via VPC Origins
    • Needing bundled security (WAF + Shield + CDN) with flat-rate pricing
  • Choose Global Accelerator when:
    • Running non-HTTP workloads (gaming/UDP, IoT/MQTT, VoIP)
    • Needing deterministic, instant multi-region failover
    • Requiring static IP addresses as fixed entry points (since its inception)
    • Using custom routing to deterministically route users to specific EC2 instances (e.g., multiplayer gaming matchmaking)
    • Needing Kubernetes-native management of global traffic acceleration
    • Running multi-region S3 workloads via S3 Multi-Region Access Points
  • Use both together when:
    • Needing CDN caching for web content AND fast failover for backend APIs
    • Building multi-tier applications with both HTTP and non-HTTP components

AWS CloudFront vs Global Accelerator

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. A company wants to improve the availability and performance of its stateless UDP-based workload. The workload is deployed on Amazon EC2 instances in multiple AWS Regions. What should a solutions architect recommend to accomplish this?
    1. Place the EC2 instances behind Network Load Balancers (NLBs) in each Region. Create an accelerator using AWS Global Accelerator. Use the NLBs as endpoints for the accelerator.
    2. Place the EC2 instances behind Application Load Balancers (ALBs) in each Region. Create an accelerator using AWS Global Accelerator. Use the ALBs as endpoints for the accelerator.
    3. Place the EC2 instances behind Network Load Balancers (NLBs) in each Region. Create a CloudFront distribution with an origin that uses Route 53 latency-based routing to route requests to the NLBs.
    4. Place the EC2 instances behind Application Load Balancers (ALBs) in each Region. Create a CloudFront distribution with an origin that uses Route 53 latency-based routing to route requests to the ALBs.
  2. A media company delivers live streaming video to millions of global viewers. They need to reduce buffering during peak events while keeping origin infrastructure costs low. Which AWS service is the best fit?
    1. AWS Global Accelerator with NLB endpoints in each Region
    2. Amazon CloudFront with Origin Shield enabled and Embedded Points of Presence for large-scale delivery
    3. Amazon CloudFront with Global Accelerator as the origin
    4. AWS Global Accelerator with custom routing to direct viewers to specific EC2 instances
  3. A gaming company wants to route players to specific EC2 game server instances based on matchmaking logic. The application uses UDP and players are distributed globally. Which solution provides the lowest latency and deterministic routing?
    1. Amazon CloudFront with Lambda@Edge for routing logic
    2. AWS Global Accelerator with standard routing and NLB endpoints
    3. AWS Global Accelerator with custom routing accelerator mapping ports to specific EC2 instances
    4. Amazon Route 53 latency-based routing with health checks
  4. A company requires its web application origin servers to remain in private subnets with no public internet access, while still serving global users with low latency. Which solution meets these requirements?
    1. AWS Global Accelerator with private NLB endpoints
    2. Amazon CloudFront with VPC Origins pointing to private ALB/NLB/EC2 instances
    3. Amazon CloudFront with an origin in a public subnet protected by Security Groups
    4. AWS Global Accelerator with EC2 instances using Elastic IP addresses
  5. A company needs static IP addresses for their content delivery to satisfy partner allowlisting requirements. Previously this was only available with Global Accelerator. Which CloudFront feature now addresses this requirement?
    1. CloudFront Origin Access Control (OAC)
    2. CloudFront Anycast Static IPs
    3. CloudFront Dedicated IP Custom SSL
    4. CloudFront BYOIP via VPC IPAM
  6. A company running a multi-region application on Kubernetes (EKS) wants to add global traffic acceleration with automatic failover. They prefer managing infrastructure declaratively through Kubernetes resources. Which approach is most operationally efficient?
    1. Create Global Accelerator manually via AWS Console and add EKS NLB endpoints
    2. Use the AWS Load Balancer Controller with Global Accelerator CRDs to declaratively manage accelerators through Kubernetes
    3. Use Amazon CloudFront with Route 53 failover routing
    4. Use Amazon Route 53 with latency-based routing and health checks

References

AWS Global Accelerator – Anycast IPs & Performance

AWS Global Accelerator
~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil

AWS Global Accelerator

  • AWS Global Accelerator is a networking service that helps improve the availability and performance of the applications to global users.
  • AWS Global Accelerator optimizes the path to applications to keep packet loss, jitter, and latency consistently low.
  • helps improve the performance of the applications by lowering first-byte latency (the round trip time for a packet to go from a client to your endpoint and back again) and jitter (the variation of latency), and increasing throughput (amount of data transferred in a second) as compared to the public internet.
  • Global Accelerator uses the vast, well-monitored, congestion-free, redundant AWS global network to route TCP and UDP traffic to a healthy application endpoint in the closest AWS Region to the user.
  • is a global service that supports endpoints in multiple AWS Regions.
  • uses a global network of 130 Points of Presence in 95 cities across 53 countries.
  • supports AWS application endpoints, such as ALBs, NLBs, EC2 Instances, and Elastic IPs without making user-facing changes.
  • supports endpoints in 33 AWS Regions including recent additions like Mexico (Central), Asia Pacific (Malaysia), Asia Pacific (Thailand), and Asia Pacific (Taipei).
  • provides two global static public IPs that act as a fixed entry point to the application hosted in one or more AWS Regions, improving availability.
  • helps anycast the static IP addresses from the AWS edge network which serves as the frontend interface of the applications.
  • Using static IP addresses ensures you don’t need to make any client-facing changes or update DNS records as you modify or replace endpoints.
  • allows you to bring your own IP addresses (BYOIP) and use them as a fixed entry point to the application endpoints.
  • supports cross-account BYOIP, enabling the use of bring-your-own IP addresses across multiple AWS accounts.
  • Global Accelerator allocates two static IPv4 addresses serviced by independent network zones which are isolated units with their own set of physical infrastructure and service IP addresses from a unique IP subnet. If one IP address from a network zone becomes unavailable, due to network disruptions or IP address blocking by certain client networks, the client applications can retry using the healthy static IP address from the other isolated network zone.
  • supports both IPv4 and dual-stack (IPv4 + IPv6) accelerators. For dual-stack, Global Accelerator provides a total of four addresses: two static IPv4 addresses and two static IPv6 addresses.
  • dual-stack accelerators support routing IPv6 traffic to Application Load Balancers, Network Load Balancers, and EC2 instance endpoints.
  • continuously monitors the health of the application endpoints by using TCP, HTTP, and HTTPS health checks.
  • automatically re-routes the traffic to the nearest healthy available endpoint to mitigate endpoint failure.
  • terminates TCP connections from clients at AWS edge locations and, almost concurrently, establishes a new TCP connection with your endpoints. This gives clients faster response times (lower latency) and increased throughput. TCP termination at the edge is supported for both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic.
  • supports Client Affinity which helps build stateful applications.
  • supports Client IP address preservation for ALBs, EC2 instances, and NLBs (with security groups enabled). Client IP address preservation is not supported for Elastic IP address endpoints.
  • integrates with AWS Shield Standard, which minimizes application downtime and latency from DDoS attacks by using always-on network flow monitoring and automated in-line mitigation. AWS Shield Advanced can be enabled for enhanced DDoS detection and mitigation.
  • does not support on-premises endpoints. However, an NLB can be configured to address the on-premises endpoints while Global Accelerator points to the NLB.
  • supports cross-account attachments, allowing a single accelerator to route traffic to endpoints across multiple AWS accounts.
  • integrates with the AWS Load Balancer Controller for Kubernetes, enabling declarative management of accelerators, listeners, and endpoint groups using Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs).

AWS Global Accelerator

Global Accelerator Types

Standard Accelerator

  • Standard accelerators automatically route traffic to a healthy endpoint that is nearest to the user.
  • Designed to load balance traffic across endpoints and regions.
  • Supports weighted routing using traffic dials and endpoint weights.
  • Ideal for web applications, API acceleration, gaming (UDP), IoT (MQTT), VoIP, and HTTP use cases requiring static IP addresses or fast regional failover.

Custom Routing Accelerator

  • Custom routing accelerators allow using application logic to deterministically route users to a specific Amazon EC2 instance and port.
  • Maps each port on the accelerator to a specific destination (EC2 instance private IP address and port).
  • Users are still routed over the AWS global network for performance benefits.
  • Ideal for interactive applications such as multi-player gaming, EdTech, social media, video collaboration, and real-time communications (VoIP/SIP).
  • Integrates with matchmaking servers or session border controllers to deterministically send user traffic to specific EC2 destinations.
  • Client IP address preservation is always enabled for custom routing accelerator endpoints.

Cross-Account Support

  • Global Accelerator supports cross-account attachments that allow a single accelerator to route traffic to endpoints across multiple AWS accounts.
  • Resource owners create a cross-account attachment to authorize resources in their account to be added to an accelerator by another account.
  • Cross-account BYOIP support allows using bring-your-own IP addresses from shared CIDR blocks across accounts.
  • Simplifies multi-account architectures by enabling centralized traffic management through a single accelerator.

S3 Multi-Region Access Points

  • S3 Multi-Region Access Points use Global Accelerator transparently to provide a single global endpoint to access data sets replicated across multiple AWS Regions.
  • Based on AWS Global Accelerator, S3 Multi-Region Access Points consider factors like network congestion and the requesting application’s location to dynamically route requests to the lowest latency copy of data.
  • Enables building multi-region applications with the same architecture used in a single region.

Monitoring

  • Global Accelerator integrates with Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring.
  • CloudWatch metrics include:
    • ProcessedBytesIn / ProcessedBytesOut – traffic volume
    • NewFlowCount – new TCP/UDP flows per minute
    • HealthyEndpointCount / UnhealthyEndpointCount – endpoint health
    • ActiveFlowCount – active flows (added March 2024)
    • PacketsProcessed – total packets processed (added March 2024)
    • TCP_AGA_Reset_Count, TCP_Client_Reset_Count, TCP_Endpoint_Reset_Count – TCP reset metrics for troubleshooting (added March 2024)
  • Supports flow logs to capture information about IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in the accelerator (60-second capture window).

Global Accelerator vs CloudFront

  • Global Accelerator and CloudFront both use the AWS global network and its edge locations around the world.
  • Both services integrate with AWS Shield for DDoS protection.
  • Performance
    • CloudFront improves performance for both cacheable content (such as images and videos) and dynamic content (such as API acceleration and dynamic site delivery).
    • Global Accelerator improves performance for a wide range of applications over TCP or UDP by proxying packets at the edge to applications running in one or more AWS Regions.
  • Use Cases
    • CloudFront is a good fit for HTTP use cases
    • Global Accelerator is a good fit for non-HTTP use cases, such as gaming (UDP), IoT (MQTT), or VoIP, as well as for HTTP use cases that require static IP addresses or deterministic, fast regional failover.
  • Caching
    • CloudFront supports Edge caching
    • Global Accelerator does not support Edge Caching.
  • IP Addresses
    • CloudFront uses dynamic IP addresses for edge locations.
    • Global Accelerator provides static anycast IP addresses as a fixed entry point.

AWS CloudFront vs Global Accelerator

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. What features does AWS Global Accelerator provide? (Select TWO)
    1. Improved security
    2. Improved durability
    3. Improved performance
    4. Improved cost optimization
    5. Improved availability
  2. A company that develops web applications has launched hundreds of Application Load Balancers (ALBs) in multiple Regions. The company wants to create an allow list for the IPs of all the load balancers on its firewall device. A solutions architect is looking for a one-time, highly available solution to address this request, which will also help reduce the number of IPs that need to be allowed by the firewall. What should the solutions architect recommend to meet these requirements?
    1. Create an AWS Lambda function to keep track of the IPs for all the ALBs in different Regions. Keep refreshing this list.
    2. Set up a Network Load Balancer (NLB) with Elastic IPs. Register the private IPs of all the ALBs as targets to this NLB.
    3. Launch AWS Global Accelerator and create endpoints for all the Regions. Register all the ALBs in different Regions to the corresponding endpoints.
    4. Set up an Amazon EC2 instance, assign an Elastic IP to this EC2 instance, and configure the instance as a proxy to forward traffic to all the ALBs.
  3. A company operates a multi-player online gaming platform with game servers deployed across multiple AWS Regions. The company needs to route players to specific game servers based on matchmaking logic while maintaining low latency. Which AWS service and accelerator type should the solutions architect use?
    1. AWS Global Accelerator with standard accelerator and endpoint weights
    2. AWS Global Accelerator with custom routing accelerator
    3. Amazon CloudFront with Lambda@Edge for routing logic
    4. Amazon Route 53 with latency-based routing
  4. A company has a multi-account AWS architecture and wants to route traffic through a single AWS Global Accelerator to endpoints in different AWS accounts. What feature should the solutions architect use?
    1. AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM) sharing
    2. VPC peering between accounts
    3. Global Accelerator cross-account attachments
    4. AWS Organizations service control policies
  5. A company requires both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity for their global application. They want to use AWS Global Accelerator with static IP addresses for both protocols. What type of accelerator should they create?
    1. Standard accelerator with BYOIP addresses
    2. Dual-stack accelerator
    3. Custom routing accelerator with IPv6 enabled
    4. Standard accelerator with two separate configurations

References