This article aims to introduce global acceleration solutions in different cloud providers. This service makes you deploy projects worldwide and achieve global network access cross-regional deployment, maintaining high quality in your business.

Can CDN satisfy our needs?

The operation of CDN is based on the 7th layer protocol of OSI, which uses the flexible IP address in the user’s DNS server. By contrast, Global Acceleration can operate on the fourth layer protocol and access terminal nodes worldwide. Thus, you can use this service when your environment sets a whitelist for a few fixed IPs. Also, if you are determined to release an international game service, you can use the closest servers to achieve a cross-country service by Global Acceleration.

AWS Global Accelerator

 “A network layer service that you can deploy in front of your internet applications to improve the availability and performance for your globally-distributed user base.

AWS Global Accelerator uses AWS’ vast, highly available and congestion-free global network to direct internet traffic from your users to your applications running in AWS Regions.” (This paragraph is cited from AWS website: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/11/introducing-aws-global-accelerator/?nc1=h_ls ) 

As an illustration, let’s see AWS Global Accelerator operation process. If the user makes a request, the DNS analyzer directs the request to an Anycast IP, given by Global Accelerator, and then access the AWS edge node, which would detect the closest Region and access it. When accessing the Region, the Load Balancer and Health Check would ensure services after the endpoint can work. Conversely, if services after an endpoint do not operate, it won’t allow traffic to pass through an endpoint. Thus, the process ensures the service runs effectively without unexpected termination.

“GA assigns an accelerated IP address to each acceleration region in an acceleration area. Clients from an acceleration region can connect to the access point that is closest to the clients through the accelerated IP address. The access point receives client requests and forwards the requests over the Alibaba Cloud global network. GA then automatically selects routes to distribute client requests to the optimal endpoints. This allows you to avoid network congestion and reduce network latency.”
(This paragraph is cited from Alibaba website : https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/doc-detail/153189.htm?spm=a2c63.l28256.a3.5.69406796dpGhFK )

Alibaba Cloud’s global acceleration aims to shorten the distance among countries. For example, when a user makes a request, the DNS analyzer leads it to an acceleration area. Then, it would be given an accelerated IP to access the next step, the optimal endpoints. And then finally access the source station, which can be in the cloud or on-premise.

“Leveraging its high-speed connections, forwarding clusters and intelligent routing technology for global nodes, Global Application Acceleration Platform (GAAP) enables users to access the origin server through a high-speed connection with the help of the nearest node, eliminating stutter and latency experienced by global users when accessing businesses.”(This paragraph is cited from Tencent Cloud website : https://intl.cloud.tencent.com/product/gaap?lang=en&pg=)

In GAAP, you need to set up the source station; it could be an IP address or domain name. Then, to select regions that could faster access the source station.

“Global load balancing with single anycast IP: With Cloud Load Balancing, a single anycast IP front-ends all your backend instances in regions around the world. It provides cross-region load balancing, including automatic multi-region failover, which gently moves traffic in fractions if backends become unhealthy. In contrast to DNS-based global load balancing solutions, Cloud Load Balancing reacts instantaneously to changes in users, traffic, network, backend health, and other related conditions.” (This paragraph is cited from GCP website : https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/)

GCP Load Balancing provides Anycast IP, which enables clients to access this IP address anywhere. Then, it directs traffic into the closest Region around the clients.

Summary

AWS Global Accelerator & GCP Cloud Load Balancing

AWS Global Accelerator and GCP Cloud Load Balancing provide Anycast IP, a single fixed IP. As a result, even clients in different countries access the same IP address to reach the nearest global access. Then, Global Accelerator and Global Accelerator automatically lead the website traffic to the closest region, depending on the clients’ location. Notably, the source station needs to belong to the AWS service or AWS resource if you use the AWS Global Accelerator service. On the other hand, if you use the GCP Cloud Load Balancing service, the source station is not limited to GCP service; instead, it could be s service on other cloud platforms or on-premises servers.

We highly recommend using these two services if your product targets the international market. For example, a multiple-country game product achieves global acceleration, low latency, and low packet loss by using these services. It could make the game player have the best experience to enjoy your game product.
 

Tencent Cloud GAAP & Alibaba Cloud Global Accelerator

The global acceleration of Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud is more like shortening the distance between the country and the country to have the so-called pick-up point and drop-off point. The pick-up point is regions where you need to accelerate. The drop-off point is your source station. The source station of these two clouds can also be customized. For example, it can be the resource of any cloud provider or the on-premise server.

How can you use these services to enhance your business? Whether your business needs to transmit data among countries or launch a global product, we all highly recommend you use these services. For example, you work at a multinational company in Silicon Valley, and you usually need to retrieve data from the other firm in Hong Kong. In such a scenario, we highly recommend you use these services. Or, if you are determined to launch a global game product and need all players at the same server without dividing them into different regions, these services also suit you. It enables players worldwide to access the closest region server to play the real-time game with other players coming from other countries.