AWS Global Accelerator is a networking service from Amazon Web Services that improves the availability, performance, and security of applications with global users by routing user traffic through the AWS global network instead of the public internet[1][2][5]. It provides two static anycast IP addresses as fixed entry points to your applications, which remain constant even as you add or remove endpoints or change regions, simplifying network management and client configurations[2][5].
Key Features:
- Traffic Routing via AWS Global Network: Instead of routing traffic over the internet, Global Accelerator uses the AWS private global network, which reduces latency, improves transfer speeds, and increases reliability by bypassing internet congestion and local outages[2][5].- Static IP Addresses: It allocates two static IP addresses that are anycast from AWS edge locations worldwide, providing a single entry point for your application regardless of the number of AWS Regions or endpoints deployed[2][5].
- Health Checks and Failover: Global Accelerator continuously monitors the health of application endpoints (such as Network Load Balancers, Application Load Balancers, EC2 instances, or Elastic IPs) and automatically routes traffic to the nearest healthy endpoint, ensuring high availability and fault tolerance[2][5].
- Multi-Region and Multi-Endpoint Support: It supports routing traffic across multiple AWS Regions and availability zones, enabling disaster recovery and resiliency by rerouting traffic in case of regional failures[2][5].
- Custom Routing Accelerator: Allows specific user traffic routing to designated instances and ports within VPC subnets, useful for more granular traffic management[5].
- Traffic Management: You can control traffic distribution by adjusting traffic dial percentages and weights for endpoint groups, facilitating testing, gradual rollouts, and load balancing[5].
- Bring Your Own IP (BYOIP): You can bring your own IP address ranges to use with Global Accelerator, maintaining consistent IP addresses for your applications[2].
Use Cases:
- Applications requiring low latency such as gaming, VoIP, and streaming.- Global applications needing improved availability and disaster recovery.
- Simplifying network scaling and IP address management for applications with dynamic endpoints.
- Industries like IoT, retail, and healthcare where client updates are challenging[5].
How It Works:
1. Users connect to the static IP addresses provided by Global Accelerator.2. The service routes traffic through the AWS global network to the optimal endpoint based on health and geographic proximity.
3. Traffic is directed to the best-performing regional endpoint, improving performance and availability[5].
AWS Global Accelerator leverages over 100 AWS edge locations globally to deliver these benefits, making it a robust solution for enhancing the performance and reliability of internet-facing applications[2][5].
In summary, AWS Global Accelerator is designed to optimize global application traffic by using the AWS global network for faster, more reliable, and secure routing, while simplifying IP management and improving fault tolerance across multiple regions and endpoints.
Citations:
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/
[2] https://www.hava.io/blog/what-is-aws-global-accelerator
[3] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/managedservices/latest/userguide/global-acc.html
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjYk8lkNf9o
[5] https://www.nops.io/glossary/what-is-aws-global-accelerator/
[6] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-resource-globalaccelerator-accelerator.html