Content Delivery and DNS Services

Question 1

What is Route 53?

Answer 1

Route 53 is the AWS Domain Name Service.

What does it do?
- Domain registration – Route 53 allows you to register domain names.

• Domain Name Service (DNS) – Route 53 translates names to IP addresses using a global network of authoritative DNS servers.
• Health checking – Route 53 sends automated requests to your application to verify that it’s reachable, available and functional.

Question 2

What is Amazon CloudFront?

Answer 2

CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that allows you to store (cache) your content at “edge locations” located around the world.

CloudFront can be used for data, videos, applications, and APIs.

CloudFront uses Edge Locations and Regional Edge Caches.

Question 3

What is an origin (in regards to CloudFront)?

Answer 3

An origin is the origin of the files that the CDN will distribute.

Origins can be either an S3 bucket, an EC2 instance, an Elastic Load Balancer, or Route 53 – can also be external (non-AWS).