AWS for DevOps — Advanced Networking

Chapter 12 — Advanced Networking

Beyond VPCs and subnets, production applications need DNS, CDN, load balancing, SSL certificates, and web application firewalls. This chapter covers the networking services that make your applications fast, secure, and globally available.

What You Will Learn

Section	Topic	Key Concept
12.1	Route 53	DNS management and routing policies
12.2	CloudFront	Content delivery network (CDN)
12.3	ALB vs NLB	Choosing the right load balancer
12.4	ACM Certificates	Free SSL/TLS certificates
12.5	WAF Basics	Web application firewall
12.6	Practice Exercises	Hands-on labs

How These Services Fit Together

  User Request
       │
       ▼
  ┌─────────┐     DNS resolution
  │ Route 53│────────────────────────┐
  └─────────┘                        │
       │                             │
       ▼                             ▼
  ┌───────────┐   origin request   ┌─────────┐
  │CloudFront │───────────────────→│   ALB    │
  │   (CDN)   │  ┌── WAF ──┐      │          │
  │           │  │ Block bad│      │ SSL via  │
  │ Cached at │  │ requests │      │   ACM    │
  │ 400+ edges│  └──────────┘      └────┬─────┘
  └───────────┘                         │
                                        ▼
                                  ┌──────────┐
                                  │ ECS/EC2  │
                                  │ Targets  │
                                  └──────────┘

Service Overview

Service	What It Does	Monthly Cost
Route 53	DNS hosting + health checks	$0.50/hosted zone + queries
CloudFront	CDN — cache content at edge	Pay per request + data transfer
ALB	Layer 7 load balancer	~$16/month + data
NLB	Layer 4 load balancer	~$16/month + data
ACM	Free SSL/TLS certificates	Free
WAF	Block malicious requests	$5/web ACL + $1/rule + requests

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Next → Route 53