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Accelerate, Secure, and Scale Content with AWS CloudFront

An employee engagement provider specializing in employee research and surveys experienced several challenges as its user base expanded rapidly. The primary issues included:
  • High Latency: Customers from distant regions were facing slow page load times.
  • Poor User Experience: Slow loading for product demonstrations and lag in search functionality.
  • Traffic Spikes: High number of user events caused unpredictable traffic surges, leading to performance bottlenecks and increased server costs.
  • Security Concerns: The site was subject to malicious traffic and attempted attacks from various regions.

THE CHALLENGE

  • Global Latency: The Application servers were located in a single region. This caused high latency for users in far-off regions (e.g., Europe, Asia-Pacific users accessing U.S.-based server).
  • Scalability Issues: High traffic during flash sales and promotional events often led to slowdowns or server crashes.
  • Content Delivery: Product videos and large images were taking too long to load for international users, leading to cart abandonment and lost revenue.
  • Security Risks: The company faced a growing number of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and attempted web exploits.

Ryval-X Solution:

Ryval-X implemented AWS CloudFront as the primary solution for improving content delivery and enhancing site security. We deployed the solution in conjunction with other AWS services, such as Amazon S3 and AWS WAF.

Solution Architecture:

Global Content Delivery:

  • Ryval-X integrated CloudFront with their S3 buckets (used to store static assets like images, videos, and survey documentation).
  • CloudFront’s global edge locations ensured that cached content, such as product images and videos, was served from locations closest to the end-users, minimizing latency.
  • By using a Web Distribution setup, dynamic content from the customer API and search functionality was also routed through CloudFront, optimizing delivery with faster round-trip times.

Dynamic Content Acceleration:

  • For search functionality and real-time updates, CloudFront leveraged origin caching and Lambda@Edge to cache dynamic responses at the edge based on user region.
  • This improved the speed of API responses and reduced load on the origin servers.
  • Lambda@Edge functions were used to personalize content for users, such as serving localized promotions and customizing headers based on the user’s location.

Scalability and Traffic Management:

  • CloudFront’s ability to scale automatically with demand allowed the customer to handle sudden traffic spikes during promotional campaigns without any performance degradation.
  • The company no longer needed to over-provision its backend infrastructure, reducing server costs while ensuring consistent performance during high-traffic periods.

Security Enhancements:

  • AWS Shield Standard was enabled to provide DDoS protection, helping to mitigate volumetric attacks that could potentially overwhelm the site.
  • AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) was configured with CloudFront to filter out malicious traffic based on IP reputation, SQL injection patterns, and cross-site scripting attempts.
  • Geo-Blocking was set up using CloudFront to restrict access from certain regions known for generating malicious traffic, further securing the platform.
  • Signed URLs and Cookies were utilized for premium content delivery, ensuring that only authenticated users could access restricted content like high-resolution product demos.

What customer achieved:

1. Reduced Latency by 60%

After implementing CloudFront, global users experienced a significant reduction in latency. The average page load time for users outside the U.S. dropped by 60%, leading to improved user experience and higher engagement rates.

2. Cost Efficiency

By offloading traffic to CloudFront’s edge locations, the customer reduced the load on its origin servers, leading to a 30% reduction in infrastructure costs. They no longer needed overprovisioning the infra resources for traffic spikes.

3. Improved Scalability

CloudFront’s auto-scaling features allowed the customer to seamlessly handle high-traffic periods during surveys without downtime or slowdowns. The platform successfully managed a 300% spike in traffic without any performance issues.

4. Enhanced Security

AWS Shield and AWS WAF, combined with CloudFront, drastically reduced the impact of DDoS attacks and blocked thousands of malicious requests daily. The customer saw a 95% decrease in the volume of successful attacks.

5. Faster Content Delivery

Caching product images, CSS, and JavaScript files at CloudFront’s edge locations sped up the load times for all static content. Video buffering was minimized, improving user retention and reducing cart abandonment.

Key Metrics Before and After CloudFront:

Metric
Before CloudFront
After CloudFront
Average Page Load Time
3.5 seconds
1.4 seconds
Global User Latency
High (2-4 seconds)
Reduced by 60%
Server Downtime During Sales
Frequent during spikes
None
Infrastructure Cost
High provisioning
Reduced by 30%
DDoS Attacks
High provisioning
Effectively mitigated

Key Learnings:

  • Optimize Cache Invalidation: Efficient cache invalidation strategies were critical for ensuring that users received up-to-date content without increasing the load on the origin servers.
  • Leverage Lambda@Edge: Personalizing content at the edge using Lambda@Edge allowed the company to improve user experience without having to significantly increase backend complexity.
  • Integrate WAF Early: Enabling AWS WAF from the start was crucial in preventing malicious requests and protecting the platform from web-based exploits.

Conclusion:

By implementing AWS CloudFront, Ryval-X significantly improved the performance and security of its customer survey platform. The company was able to provide a better user experience through faster content delivery, enhance site security, and reduce costs by offloading traffic to edge locations and reducing the load on the origin infrastructure.

This implementation allowed the customer to scale efficiently with growing user demand, maintain high availability during traffic surges, and protect itself from security threats.

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