The Secret Life of AWS: The Global Highway
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Why the public internet is slow, and how to use the AWS private highway.
Part 7 of The Secret Life of AWS
Timothy was sitting at the telegraph desk, tapping his fingers impatiently. A ticker tape was slowly—painfully slowly—spitting out paper from the machine.
"What is the matter?" Margaret asked, pausing by the desk.
"I am trying to download the catalog from our Singapore branch," Timothy sighed. "But the connection is terrible. It stops, it starts, it lags. It has been an hour."
Margaret looked at the wire running out the window. "That is because you are sending your data over the Public Internet."
She beckoned him to the chalkboard. "We need to discuss Network Hops."
The Public Internet (The Local Roads)
Margaret drew two dots on far sides of the board: London and Singapore. She drew a jagged, zigzagging line connecting them.
"When you send a request to Singapore over the public internet," she explained, "your data does not go directly there. It hops."
She tapped the zigzags.
"It goes from your ISP to a local exchange... to a carrier in France... to a cable under the sea... to a telecom provider in India... and finally to Singapore. That is twenty or thirty stops. At every stop, there is traffic. There is congestion. A single broken router in Cairo can slow down your connection in London."
Timothy looked at the ticker tape. "So my data is stuck in traffic?"
"Exactly," Margaret said. "You are driving a Ferrari, but you are stuck on local roads with traffic lights."
Global Accelerator (The Private Expressway)
Margaret picked up a blue chalk. She drew a smooth, straight arc connecting London and Singapore, bypassing the jagged line entirely.
"This," she said, "is the AWS Global Network."
"AWS has its own fiber optic backbone laid around the world. They do not share these cables with the public. It is a private, uncongested highway."
"That sounds faster," Timothy said. "But how do I get on it? The server is in Singapore."
"You use Global Accelerator," Margaret said. "Instead of driving all the way to Singapore on public roads, you drive to the nearest Edge Location."
She drew a small circle around London.
"You connect to AWS right here in London. As soon as your data enters the AWS network, it gets on the private highway. It travels smoothly, without traffic lights, all the way to Singapore."
Anycast IP (The Universal On-Ramp)
"That sounds wonderful," Timothy said. "But wouldn't I need different addresses for London users versus Tokyo users?"
"No," Margaret smiled. "That is the magic of Anycast IP. When you enable Global Accelerator, AWS gives you two static IP addresses. These same addresses work everywhere in the world."
She wrote 1.2.3.4 on the board.
"How can one address work everywhere?"
"Think of it as the sign for the highway on-ramp," Margaret explained. "If a user in New York types 1.2.3.4, the network directs them to the New York on-ramp. If a user in Tokyo types 1.2.3.4, the network directs them to the Tokyo on-ramp."
"It is one address," Timothy realized, "that intelligently connects everyone to their nearest entry point."
The Difference: CloudFront vs. Accelerator
Timothy frowned. "Wait. This sounds like the CDN (Content Delivery Network) you told me about weeks ago. Caching copies of books in local libraries."
"Sharp memory," Margaret nodded approvingly. "But there is a difference."
- CloudFront (CDN): "This is for static content. Images, videos, files. We make copies and store them closer to the user. Like mailing a catalog to their house."
- Global Accelerator: "This is for dynamic applications. Gaming, voice calls, live data. Things that cannot be copied. We cannot move the Singapore server to London, so we build a faster road to Singapore."
"Ah," Timothy understood. "If I want to read a book, use the CDN. If I want to talk to the librarian in Singapore, use the Accelerator."
The Lesson
Timothy looked at the ticker tape. He canceled the job and re-routed it through the Global Accelerator IP. The machine immediately began whirring faster, spewing paper smoothly.
"So it is about choosing the right tool," Timothy realized. "Local traffic needs local solutions, but global conversations need global highways."
"Exactly," Margaret nodded. "And remember, Timothy—sometimes the fastest route isn't the shortest one. It's the one with the fewest stops."
Aaron Rose is a software engineer and technology writer at tech-reader.blog and the author of Think Like a Genius.
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