AWS CloudFront

Introduction

• CloudFront is a CDN which serves content from S3
• Reduces latency from the server to the user, and in theory decreases costs as it more optimally caches content

Usage

• Currently only use CloudFront as a CDN for our uploaded files
• This is anything that has been uploaded onto the RESN web app
• Includes essays, screenshots, worked solutions, profile photos, etc.
• Connects to the “resn-static” S3 bucket

Future

• AWS continues to be one of the easiest ways to store and serve static files
• Another option may be DigitalOcean Spaces
• Transloadit is supposed to simplify file uploading and image optimisation, but I’ve never got around to looking into it in any detail