AWS S3 Transfer Acceleration is a service that speeds up the transfer of large files over the public internet to and from Amazon S3 by leveraging Amazon CloudFront’s globally distributed edge locations.
How It Works
S3 Transfer Acceleration works by routing data through Amazon CloudFront’s globally distributed edge locations. As the data arrives at an edge location, it is routed to Amazon S3 over an optimized network path, reducing latency and improving transfer speeds.
Benefits
- Faster Data Transfers: It can accelerate long-distance transfers to and from your Amazon S3 buckets.
- Reduced Network Variability: It helps avoid the variability in Internet routing and congestion by routing your uploads and downloads over the AWS global network infrastructure.
- Shortened Distance to S3: It shortens the distance between client applications and AWS servers that acknowledge PUTS and GETS to Amazon S3 using AWS’s global network of CloudFront Edge Locations.
- Maximized Bandwidth Utilization: It fully utilizes your bandwidth for transfers, and minimizes the effect of distance on throughput.
Limitations
- Pricing Unpredictability: Due to the complexity of AWS services, pricing can be unpredictable.
- Limited Data Transfer Rates: There are limits to data transfer rates.
- Vendor Lock-In: S3 Transfer Acceleration is built to keep users within the AWS cloud.
Features
- Global Edge Locations: It leverages Amazon CloudFront’s globally distributed edge locations to accelerate transfers.
- Optimized Network Path: It uses an optimized network path to route data to Amazon S3, reducing latency and improving transfer speeds.
- Easy to Enable: It can be enabled with a few clicks in the S3 console.
Use Cases
- Mobile & Web Application Uploads and Downloads: It can speed up long-distance transfers to provide users a better experience.
- Distributed Office Transfers: IT infrastructure teams and line-of-business teams have on-premises applications in distributed locations that use the S3 API to store files, lab imagery or media in a centralized bucket.