AWS Origin Shield
AWS Origin Shield is an optional, additional caching layer within AWS CloudFront that acts as a central shield for origin servers. It minimizes the number of requests hitting the origin by consolidating cache-miss requests from CloudFront's global edge locations into a single, highly available…
Key facts
- First appeared
- 2020
- Category
- technology
- Problem solved
- AWS Origin Shield was created to address the 'thundering herd' problem and excessive origin load experienced by CloudFront users, particularly those with globally distributed traffic and high cache-miss rates. Before Origin Shield, when content expired or was not present in an edge cache, multiple CloudFront edge locations would simultaneously send requests to the origin, leading to increased origin infrastructure costs, potential performance bottlenecks, and reduced overall efficiency of the CDN caching strategy.
- Platforms
- AWS CloudFront Global Network
Related technologies
Notable users
- Any large-scale enterprise utilizing AWS CloudFront for global content delivery, especially for streaming media, e-commerce, or dynamic web applications.
- Companies with high-traffic websites that frequently update content.