Improve performance, accuracy, and security with AWS Global Accelerator

How to improve the availability, performance, and security of an application or website with AWS Global Accelerator?

AWS Global Accelerator is a network layer service with IPs Anycast is a service that routes user traffic from the closest point of entry to the AWS global network to your best endpoint. This practical and technical guide provides implementation steps, AWS CLI commands, server configurations, optimization tips, and security recommendations to improve the availability, performance, and security of a sample application/website.

Why use AWS Global Accelerator?

Key Benefits:

• Global Anycast IPs: One or two static IPs that are advertised worldwide, eliminating the need to change DNS when routing traffic to different regions.
• Optimal routes in the AWS network: Traffic travels within the high-speed, low-latency AWS network, and the public internet is used less.
• TCP and UDP support: Suitable for HTTP/HTTPS, gaming, VoIP, and trading with low latency requirements.
• Fast failover between regions: Centralized health check and rapid traffic routing to healthy endpoints.

Suggested architecture for sample application and website

An example of a multi-region architecture using Global Accelerator:

• Two regions (e.g. us-east-1 and eu-west-1) each of which has NLB Or ALB And behind that are EC2/Auto Scaling Group or Kubernetes.
• Global Accelerator with two endpoint-group (each to a region) and a listener on ports 80/443 (TCP) or UDP ports for the game.
• For static content from a CDN (e.g. CloudFront or corporate CDN with 85+ locations).
• To protect against DDoS from AWS Shield Advanced And for application layer filtering from AWS WAF Leverage ALB/CloudFront.
• Monitoring and alerting via CloudWatch and integration with operational channels.

Step-by-Step: Building an Accelerator with the AWS CLI (Practical Example)

Key steps to create an Accelerator with AWS CLI and example commands:

aws globalaccelerator create-accelerator --name my-accelerator --ip-address-type IPV4 --enabled

Output includes AcceleratorArn And there will be dedicated Anycast IPs that you can use in DNS.

aws globalaccelerator create-listener --accelerator-arn <AcceleratorArn> --protocol TCP --port-ranges From=443,To=443

Create Endpoint Group for regions (example for us-east-1 to NLB):

aws globalaccelerator create-endpoint-group --listener-arn <ListenerArn> --endpoint-group-region us-east-1 --endpoint-configurations EndpointId=<NLB_ARN>,Weight=128 --health-check-protocol HTTP --health-check-path /health --health-check-interval-seconds 10 --threshold-count 3

Important notes:

• EndpointId Can the ARN be a NLB, ALB, or IP address (for EC2 or on-prem).
• Health check on the route /health Hold and return a simple 200 response for health.

Simple application example (Node.js) and Health Check test

Node.js server instance that path /health It returns a 200 response and shows the region message:

const http = require('http');
http.createServer((req, res) => {
  if (req.url === '/health') return res.writeHead(200).end('ok');
  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type':'text/plain'});
  res.end('Hello from region X');
}).listen(3000);

Place this app in EC2 or container behind NLB/ALB and make sure the path /health It returns a 200 response on each instance.

Maintaining client IP and Proxy Protocol

Important points about preserving the client IP address:

• NLB: If you use NLB, Global Accelerator can Client's real IP and the application can see the original IP.
• ALB: Usually header X-Forwarded-For To fully preserve the IP on the ALB, use a Proxy protocol or place NLB in front of the ALB.
• Use this feature to enable Proxy Protocol v2 in NLB when registering targets and process it in NGINX/HAProxy.

Example of enabling PROXY v2 in NGINX (with stream module For TCP):

stream {
    server {
        listen 443 proxy_protocol;
        proxy_pass backend:443;
        proxy_protocol_timeout 10s;
    }
}

And in the application's server-side settings, process the proxy protocol.

Performance optimization for trading, gaming, web, and AI

Optimization strategies based on application type:

• Trade and Game: Use UDP or TCP with the fewest hops. Global Accelerator moves traffic across the AWS network; for trades, the region with the closest endpoint or configuration traffic dials Offers the lowest ping.
• Website and API: Use of HTTP/2, TLS session resumption, OCSP stapling, compression GZIP/Brotli and compression on CDN or NLB/ALB.
• AI/Rendering: For large data traffic, use NLB and multi-region architecture, and if you need GPUs, use graphics servers in specific regions.

Linux server TCP tuning (example commands):

sudo sysctl -w net.core.somaxconn=65535
sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse=1
sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout=15

And to make it permanent, select the options in /etc/sysctl.conf Add.

NGINX tuning for high connections (example configuration):

worker_processes auto;
worker_connections 65536;
keepalive_timeout 65;
tcp_nopush on;
tcp_nodelay on;

Security: WAF, Shield, TLS and access management

Key security tips:

• DDoS: Global Accelerator with AWS Shield Comes with; for wider coverage Shield Advanced Enable to protect your Anycast IPs.
• WAF: Global Accelerator doesn't have its own WAF, but you can AWS WAF Place it on ALB or CloudFront to filter application layer traffic.
• TLS: terminate TLS on the ALB or on the Load Balancer/NGINX. If you need end-to-end TLS, use certificates on the endpoints as well (e.g. with ACM).
• Rate limiting and Bot protection: Create custom rules in the WAF layer and use JWT and rate limits for the API.
• IAM: Restrict access to Global Accelerator operations with appropriate policies (e.g., access control on actions related to globalaccelerator:*).
• Logging: Activation VPC Flow Logs, ALB/NLB access logs and CloudWatch Logs For monitoring and analyzing events.

Performance monitoring and testing

Suggested tools and metrics:

• CloudWatch metrics For Global Accelerator like FlowCount, NewFlowCount, BytesProcessed and ClientTLSNegotiationErrorCount.
• Define alarms for traffic increases or decreases and automatically respond or notify the operations team.
• Using synthetic checks or Route 53 Health Checks To check from multiple locations.
• Load testing with tools like k6, work Or Gatling And testing in each region.
• Latency monitoring with RUM or synthetic probes from important points for users (gamers, traders).

Practical scenarios and implementation tips

Practical issues and implementation tips:

1. Fast failover between regions: Define Global Accelerator health checks on fast paths (e.g. /health) and from Traffic Dial Use to decrease/increase traffic percentage.
2. Reduce DNS change maintenance: Static Anycast IPs allow traffic to be forwarded to a healthy region without changing DNS.
3. Combined use with corporate CDN: Static CDN at the edge (85+ locations) brings static files closer to the user, and Global Accelerator is used for dynamic routes and APIs.
4. Cost and efficiency: Global Accelerator has hourly and data charges; for high traffic, compare it to solutions like CloudFront + Regional ALB/NLB.

Comparing data center locations and choosing the best region

Tips for choosing the right region:

• The closest region is not always the best in terms of RTT; the quality of the internet path between the user and the AWS PoP and the capacity of the region also matter.
• For gamers and traders, having an AWS edge region near the user's POP ISP or using VPS in locations close to the customer can reduce ping.
• For AI and rendering, it is important to choose a region that provides GPU Cloud and high-speed storage (NVMe or EBS Provisioned IOPS).
• A/B testing between regions and using Global Accelerator to drive traffic to the best region is the best way to go.

Sample Scenario: Launching a Website with Global Accelerator (Steps Summary)

Summary of the implementation steps:

1. Deploying the application in two regions with NLB/ALB and Auto Scaling.
2. Path definition /health In the app.
3. Create Accelerator and Listener with AWS CLI or Console.
4. Create Endpoint Groups and add NLB/ALB ARNs.
5. Bind Anycast IPs to DNS (A record) or set up CNAME for CDN.
6. Enable Shield Advanced and WAF for protection.
7. Enable CloudWatch and define alarms; perform load tests and check latency/availability.
8. Use the company's CDN for assets and session/cookie management for sticky sessions if needed.

Final Tips and Best Practices

Best practices at a glance:

• Definition of short and independent health checks.
• Using ACM and TLS offload on ALB.
• For real-time (UDP) traffic, use Global Accelerator to reduce jitter and packet loss.
• Documenting ARNs, Anycast IPs, and preparing failover runbooks is essential for the operations team.

Conclusion and next steps

AWS Global Accelerator is a powerful tool for improving performance, availability, and security, especially in multi-region architectures that use NLB/ALB and security services. Combined with graphics infrastructure, specialized VPS, and edge CDN, it can improve the user experience for gaming, trading, and AI applications.

Frequently Asked Questions