CloudFront Performance Considerations:

• CloudFront performance can be affected by:
  • File size and type of file.
  • Having to remake the request from the Edge Location to the Origin.
    • Downloading the object from the origin takes time.
    • As well as writing it to cache and responding to the end user request.
    • The more requests that have to go to the origin, the higher the load is on your resource. Which can also cause latency and load performance issue.
  • The end location that the user's request goes to is dependent upon a "DNS check" to determine the closest Edge location. So slow DNS issues can cause performance issues.
  • Query strings (request to the origin to serve a specific object) reduce cache "hits":
    • http://cdn.linuxacademy.com?querythis=querywhat.
    • It reduces performance because query strings are often unique so it reduces the cache hits and also requires extra "work" in order to forward to the origin location.
• CloudFront Performance can be increased by:
  • Longer cache periods increases performance (less frequent request to the source).