What CloudFront Is

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CloudFront — AWS’s CDN

Caches your content at 400+ edge locations so users get it from nearby, not from a single region. On DOP-C02 it’s never the headline — it shows up glued to S3, WAF, or an ALB.

~38 min total7 modules7 quiz questionsDOP-C02: Low · SAA/DVA: High

CloudFront is AWS’s Content Delivery Network. Without it, a user in Tokyo requesting a file from an S3 bucket in us-east-1 waits for a full round trip across the Pacific. With it, they get the content from an edge location in Tokyo — much faster, and with far less load on your origin.

ℹ️On DOP-C02, CloudFront is a Low-weight topic. It rarely stands alone — expect it bundled into larger solutions: CloudFront + S3 (global static hosting), CloudFront + WAF (edge filtering), CloudFront + ALB (dynamic content). Learn the patterns, not the deep config.

The Four Nouns

DistributionYour CloudFront configuration. Points to one or more origins and defines cache behaviors, TTL, HTTPS, and edge functions.

OriginWhere CloudFront fetches uncached content: S3 (static), ALB/EC2 (dynamic), API Gateway, or any custom HTTP server.

Edge locationThe physical PoP where content is cached and served to nearby users. 400+ worldwide.

BehaviorA path pattern (e.g. /images/*) with its own origin, caching, and function settings — how you route different paths differently.

Where It Hides on the Exam

Serve S3 static content globally, block direct S3 accessCloudFront + S3 + OAC

Stop DDoS / malicious IPs before the appCloudFront + WAF (us-east-1)

Custom domain with HTTPS on the CDNCloudFront + ACM cert (us-east-1)

Rewrite URLs / validate tokens at the edgeCloudFront Functions / Lambda@Edge