AWS CloudFront: Geo-Restrictions and Price Classes

In AWS CloudFront, two key features - Geo-Restrictions and Price Classes - significantly affect the way your content is distributed and how you're charged for the service.

Geo-Restrictions: Geo-restrictions, also known as Geo-blocking, is a feature that allows you to control which users in specific geographical locations are able to access your content distributed through CloudFront. It's important to implement Geo-Restrictions if you have content that should not be accessed in certain countries due to copyright issues, regulations, etc.

How Geo-Restrictions work: You can either choose to whitelist or blacklist countries. Whitelisting allows access to only users in the specified countries. Blacklisting blocks access to users in specified countries.

Price Classes: Price Classes allow you to control the cost of CloudFront by restricting the edge locations where your content will be served. AWS CloudFront has three price tiers with each tier having a different rate depending on the global regions that serve your content. Lower price classes mean fewer regions hence cheaper, but may increase the latency.

How Price Classes work: You select a price class that determines the regions that serve your content. If a region within your selected price class is unavailable, CloudFront automates content distribution to a region in next available price class.

Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Geo-Restrictions and Price Classes: Understand the difference between whitelisting and blacklisting in Geo-Restrictions. Remember, that the main purpose of Geo-Restrictions is to control access based on geographical location, while Price Classes are mainly about managing costs and performance. If an exam question refers to controlling access to content based on location, it's likely about Geo-Restrictions. If it's about managing costs or performance, think Price Classes.