Networking

Global Network Optimization with AWS Global Accelerator - Low-Latency Delivery and Failover

Learn how to route traffic onto the AWS global network using Anycast IPs, design endpoint groups, and achieve failover through health checks.

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How Global Accelerator Works and How It Differs from CloudFront

Global Accelerator is a service that forwards user traffic to backends via the AWS global network. Two static Anycast IP addresses are assigned, and users worldwide connect to the nearest AWS edge location. From there, traffic travels over the AWS private network rather than the public internet, resulting in more stable latency and reduced packet loss. While CloudFront specializes in content caching and HTTP/HTTPS delivery, Global Accelerator provides TCP/UDP-level traffic optimization. CloudFront is the right choice when caching static content or API responses is effective, whereas Global Accelerator is better suited for real-time communication such as game servers and VoIP.

Endpoint Groups and Traffic Control

Endpoint groups are defined per region, and you register ALBs, NLBs, EC2 instances, and Elastic IPs as endpoints. Each endpoint group has a traffic dial (0-100%) that controls traffic distribution across regions. For example, you can configure 70% of traffic to the Tokyo region and 30% to the Singapore region. During region migration, you can gradually shift traffic to the new region by incrementally adjusting the traffic dial, enabling a safe transition. Endpoint weights (0-255) also control traffic distribution among multiple endpoints within the same region.

Health Checks and Failover

Global Accelerator continuously performs health checks on endpoints and routes traffic to healthy endpoints within seconds of detecting a failure. While Route 53 failover depends on DNS TTL and can take tens of seconds to minutes, Global Accelerator switches almost instantly through Anycast routing changes. In a multi-region configuration, if all endpoints in the primary region become unhealthy, traffic automatically fails over to endpoints in the secondary region. The static IP addresses remain unchanged after failover, so no DNS changes or client reconnections are needed. For a deeper understanding of network design with Global Accelerator, specialized books on Amazon are helpful.

Global Accelerator Pricing

Global Accelerator pricing consists of a fixed fee and data transfer charges. The fixed fee is approximately $0.025/hour per accelerator (about $18/month), plus data transfer is charged on a per-GB basis (approximately $0.015-$0.035 per GB) depending on the source and destination regions. Compared to CloudFront (no monthly fixed fee, data transfer only), Global Accelerator is more expensive for small traffic volumes due to the fixed cost. Choose Global Accelerator for workloads using protocols that CloudFront does not support, such as TCP/UDP real-time communication and game servers.

Summary

Global Accelerator is a service that improves traffic latency and availability by leveraging the AWS global network. Its key features include stable entry points via static Anycast IPs, failover in seconds, and flexible control through traffic dials. It is particularly effective for global applications that use protocols other than HTTP.

Related Services

AWS Global AcceleratorA service that improves application availability and performance using the AWS global networkElastic Load BalancingA service that automatically distributes traffic across multiple servers for high availability and fault toleranceAmazon EC2A compute service that provides virtual servers in the cloud

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