The Hidden Power of CloudFront: Maximizing Performance and Cost Efficiency Even Without Caching

CloudFront goes beyond the stereotype of being a CDN for static content, and can be fully leveraged for dynamic web pages and APIs as well. Even without using caching, the combination of Points of Presence (PoP/Edge), the Amazon Global Network, and HTTP/3 alone can reduce latency and improve cost efficiency.

When a user first connects to the nearest PoP/Edge, the request is routed to the origin via AWS's dedicated global network instead of the general internet. As a result, network jitter is reportedly reduced by 2x, and network latency is cut by 30%.

The number of edge locations in Korea has also steadily increased, and in 2018, a fourth edge location in Seoul was additionally announced. While there have been no official announcements since then, as of June 2024, a meeting with an AWS Edge Specialist confirmed that a total of 8 Points of Presence (PoP/Edge) are operating in Korea.

There are also significant improvements at the HTTP connection stage. Based on Chrome DevTools timing, the entire HTTP Connection was shortened from 481ms to 319ms, a 33.5% improvement, with the following breakdown:

• DNS Lookup: 38.6ms → 225ms
• Connection: 206ms → 31.3ms
• SSL Negotiation: 236.6ms → 63ms

In particular, the reductions in Connection and SSL Negotiation are explained by the combination of a nearby PoP/Edge and HTTP/3. Using HTTP/3 optimizes connection setup and encryption negotiation, and TLS 1.3 is automatically applied, improving both performance and security together.

The protocol differences are also clear. HTTP/2 + TLS 1.2 requires 3 RTT for a connection, whereas HTTP/3 + TLS 1.3 reduces this to 1 RTT. Additionally, since HTTP/3 is based on QUIC, it enables independent processing per stream, mitigating the Head-of-line Blocking problem.

In mobile environments, Connection ID is particularly useful. With HTTP/2, connections are dropped when the network changes, such as between 4G, 5G, and Wi-Fi, but HTTP/3 does not depend on IP, allowing connections to be maintained even during network transitions.

There are also cost advantages. Traffic between CloudFront and AWS origins (EC2, ELB, S3) is basically exempt from transfer costs, and using an AWS MSP Partner can also be expected to provide additional discounts on CloudFront data transfer costs. Ultimately, CloudFront is summarized as a tool that can target both performance and cost efficiency for dynamic content as well, regardless of whether caching is used.