Cloud_Infra Entry: 002

CDN Edge
Caching_Latency

Published: 2025.02.28 Read_Time: 6 min
CDN Caching Illustration

The Problem of Global Latency

When serving media-heavy content to a global audience, every millisecond counts. In our initial deployment, users in APAC were experiencing P99 latencies of over 1.2s due to origin servers being located in us-east-1.

Tiered Caching Strategy

We implemented a three-tier approach to maximize cache hit ratios while ensuring content freshness:

  • L1 (Application/Redis): Frequently accessed metadata cached in-memory.
  • L2 (CloudFront Edge): Regional caching with surgical invalidation policies.
  • L3 (Shield/Origin): Protection and centralized fallback.

Technical Insight

"The trick isn't finding the perfect invalidation strategy — it's designing your system so you rarely need to invalidate at all."

Results & Impact

Metric Before After
P50 Latency (Global) 320ms 45ms
Origin Load 100% 12%