Amazon Drops CloudFront Pricing and Takes the Subway to NYC

Amazon’s CloudFront service is part of their Amazon Web Services offering. CloudFront is a content delivery networks or CDN. If you aren’t familiar with how a CDN works, here’s an easy way to think about it. When you upload your files to a webserver, the files generally sit in one place at your hosting company’s physical location. CloudFront (and any CDN) takes your files and puts them in a variety of locations to speed up the delivery to the end user. The idea is that the shorter the trip, the faster the delivery. We added CloudFront to CN last and it has helped the site to load both faster and smoother.

Amazon has made three important announcements today related to the CloudFront service. First, they have dropped the price of using CloudFront by 25%. Pricing  now starts at $0.0075 per 10,000 requests.

Next, CloudFront now supports SSL for secure transfers. To use the new SSL option, just change the links from http to http to your CloudFront content.

Lastly, and most importantly for Yankees fans, Amazon has opened a NYC edge location. This means people accessing your content from NYC and the northeast will grab your content quicker. We do believe that Mets fans will also be able to use the new edge location.