Amazon CloudFront for Media

Publication date: September 12, 2023 (Document history)

This whitepaper is for media organizations interested in delivering streaming media content to their viewers using Amazon CloudFront. Media delivery has a unique set of characteristics requiring low latency, high reliability, and high scalability. This whitepaper discusses live streaming and video on demand (VOD) workflows, as well as streaming techniques, content delivery networks (CDNs), and why CDNs are important for media delivery. It also includes best practices for end-to-end system design using Amazon CloudFront and AWS Media Services.

This paper is intended for media architects, streaming architects, network architects, and CDN operations teams.

Introduction

Delivering media content over the internet at scale poses a unique set of challenges for architects and operators. Viewers expect the highest quality of experience with wide selection of content at high resolution, fast start-up time, and reliable delivery throughout the playback session. Live streaming can amplify the challenges of maintaining consistent low latency and reliable delivery, with peaks in demand for popular content and live events. Media operators also need to ensure that content is secure in order to protect rights holders as well as their own revenue and reputation.

Amazon CloudFront is a CDN that securely delivers video, data, applications, and API operations to customers globally with low latency, high transfer speeds, and with a developer-friendly environment. CloudFront works with other AWS services and it uses a global network of Points of Presence that are all connected to AWS Regions through the AWS network backbone.

Media workloads in this context include live streaming (live events, 24/7 linear and assembled channels) and video on demand (VOD) content delivered over the internet. In both scenarios, media platforms use streaming techniques to allow end customers to view the media without having to download the content in its entirety. Delivery for closed networks has slightly different considerations. To discuss how AWS enables these types of solutions, contact an Amazon Web Services sales representative.

Media delivery requires an end-to-end systems approach. In this whitepaper, we start by explaining the architecture of media workloads. Then, we explain the streaming technologies. Finally, we describe a CDN configuration in detail.

Are you Well-Architected?

The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you understand the pros and cons of the decisions you make when building systems in the cloud. The six pillars of the Framework allow you to learn architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable systems. Using the AWS Well-Architected Tool, available at no charge in the AWS Management Console, you can review your workloads against these best practices by answering a set of questions for each pillar.

In the Streaming Media Lens, we focus on the best practices for architecting and improving your streaming media workloads on AWS.