Custom routing accelerators in AWS Global Accelerator are designed for use cases requiring deterministic routing of user traffic to specific Amazon EC2 instances, unlike standard accelerators which load balance traffic across endpoints without control over which instance serves a request.
Main Use Cases for Custom Routing Accelerators
- Multi-player Gaming Applications
Custom routing accelerators enable routing multiple players to a single game server session based on criteria such as geographic location, player skill, and game configuration. This deterministic routing ensures that players who need to be grouped together for a session are directed to the same EC2 instance, improving the gaming experience and session management.
- VoIP, Video, and Messaging Applications
Applications in voice over IP (VoIP), educational technology (EdTech), and social media often require assigning multiple users to a specific media server to initiate voice, video, or messaging sessions. Custom routing accelerators allow these applications to route users to designated media servers that handle their communication sessions reliably.
- Session-based Applications with Custom Logic
Any application that requires traffic to be routed based on custom application logic-such as matchmaking servers, session border controllers, or other real-time communication workflows-benefits from custom routing accelerators. These accelerators map specific ports on the accelerator to private IP addresses and ports of EC2 instances, allowing fine-grained control over user session routing.
- Use Cases Requiring Port-level Traffic Control
Custom routing accelerators allow you to map traffic arriving on specific ports of the accelerator to corresponding ports on EC2 instances. This is useful when different application instances run on different ports, or when you want to segregate traffic types (e.g., TCP vs UDP) and route them accordingly.
- Global Applications Needing High Performance and Security
By routing traffic through AWSâs global network backbone, custom routing accelerators provide improved performance and security. They allow users to connect to anycast IP addresses while routing traffic deterministically to backend EC2 instances in one or multiple AWS Regions, without exposing EC2 instances directly to the internet.
How Custom Routing Accelerators Work for These Use Cases
- They create a static mapping from accelerator ports to specific EC2 private IP addresses and ports within VPC subnets.
- Your application logic retrieves this mapping to route users to the correct instance and port for their session.
- Traffic is routed securely over the AWS global network backbone, improving latency and reliability.
- You control which EC2 IP addresses and ports are allowed to receive traffic, enhancing security by default.
- The accelerator supports both TCP and UDP protocols, providing flexibility for different application requirements.
Summary
Custom routing accelerators are primarily used when applications need to deterministically route multiple users to specific EC2 instances and ports based on custom criteria, such as in multi-player gaming, VoIP and media streaming, session-based communication, and other real-time, session-aware applications. They combine the performance benefits of AWSâs global network with fine-grained control over traffic routing, making them suitable for scenarios where standard load balancing is insufficient[3][4][7].
Citations:
[1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/about-custom-routing-accelerators.html
[2] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/networking-and-content-delivery/introducing-aws-global-accelerator-custom-routing-accelerators/
[3] https://cloudchipr.com/blog/aws-global-accelerator
[4] https://www.nops.io/glossary/what-is-aws-global-accelerator/
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuXx0UpUKSg
[6] https://www.hava.io/blog/what-is-aws-global-accelerator
[7] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/global-accelerator/latest/dg/about-custom-routing-how-it-works.html
[8] https://repost.aws/questions/QU95TpGapzQCGOXBe2s4saMA/custom-routing-setup-help