1.4.2. Edge Locations and Regional Edge Caches
First Principle: Edge Locations and Regional Edge Caches are global data centers that minimize latency and enhance application performance by serving cached content closer to users.
Edge Locations are data centers operated by AWS that are strategically positioned in highly populated areas around the world. Their primary purpose is to cache content (such as static website files, images, videos) closer to end-users.
Regional Edge Caches are located between AWS Regions and Edge Locations. They have larger caches than individual Edge Locations and act as intermediate caches for content that is not popular enough to stay in an Edge Location, but too popular to retrieve directly from an origin server in an AWS Region.
- Edge Locations: Cache content closest to users for lowest latency.
- Regional Edge Caches: Larger intermediate caches for less popular content.
- Amazon CloudFront: The AWS service that developers use to leverage Edge Locations and Regional Edge Caches to deliver content globally.
Scenario: You are developing a global e-commerce website with many static assets (images, CSS, JavaScript). Users worldwide need to experience fast page load times.
ā ļø Exam Trap: Edge locations serve CloudFront content and Route 53 DNS ā they do NOT run Lambda functions. Lambda@Edge runs in Regional edge caches, not all 400+ edge locations.
