Acceleration areas and regions of GA instances - Global Accelerator

An acceleration area is the area that requires accelerated access to your service. You can select the region where clients are located or the region nearest to the clients as the acceleration region.

An acceleration area is a collection of Alibaba Cloud regions. Each acceleration area contains one or more Alibaba Cloud regions. When you create a Global Accelerator (GA) instance, you must select the type of accelerated IP address based on the access mode that is required by your business. The following types of accelerated IP addresses are supported: Elastic IP Address (EIP) and Anycast EIP. The type of accelerated IP address that you select determines whether you need to specify an acceleration area.

Accelerated IP addresses

When clients send requests to accelerated IP addresses, the requests are routed to the nearest access point of the Alibaba Cloud global network.

Types of accelerated IP addresses

Accelerated IP addresses are divided into EIPs and Anycast EIPs. The following table describes the differences between the two types of accelerated IP addresses.

Item	EIP	Anycast EIP
Access mode	The custom access mode is used. You must specify an acceleration area. You can select acceleration areas and acceleration regions based on your business requirements. Global Accelerator allocates a separate EIP to each acceleration region.	The automatic access mode is used. You do not need to specify an acceleration area. Global Accelerator allocates an Anycast EIP to multiple regions across the globe. Users can connect to the nearest access point of the Alibaba Cloud global transmission network by sending requests to the Anycast EIP.
Supported access points	For more information about the acceleration areas and regions supported by Global Accelerator, see Acceleration areas and regions.	The acceleration service depends on the access points that are supported by Anycast EIP. You can use Anycast EIPs to accelerate content delivery for clients outside the Chinese mainland. To accelerate content delivery for clients in the Chinese mainland by using Anycast EIPs, you must specify China (Hong Kong) as the acceleration region. For more information, see the "Access point locations" section of the What is Anycast EIP? topic.
Characteristics	Advantages: Different accelerated IP addresses are provided for clients based on network latency after the client requests are resolved by using Alibaba Cloud DNS. This ensures that the optimal routes are used. Disadvantages: The configuration and maintenance are complex. You must specify acceleration areas and allocate bandwidth based on your business requirements. You cannot use static IP addresses to provide services.	Advantages: You do not need to specify acceleration areas and regions. Clients can automatically connect to the nearest access point, which greatly reduces O&M workloads. Disadvantages: Clients can connect only to the access points that are supported by Anycast EIPs. The acceleration performance varies based on the Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Note

For pay-as-you-go standard Global Accelerator instances, two accelerated IP addresses of the EIP type are allocated to each acceleration region. Both accelerated IP addresses can receive client traffic at the same time to ensure high availability of the acceleration area.
By default, you cannot use Anycast EIPs as accelerated IP addresses. To use Anycast EIPs as accelerated IP addresses, go to the Quota Center console, find the quota named GA supports anycast, and then click Apply in the Actions column. For more information, see the "Adjust quotas" section of the Manage GA quotas topic.
To use Anycast EIPs, the Global Accelerator instances and basic bandwidth plans must meet the following requirements:
- Global Accelerator instances: Select subscription standard Global Accelerator instances whose specifications are Large Ⅰ or higher and whose bandwidth metering method is pay-by-bandwidth.
- Basic bandwidth plans: Select the premium bandwidth type and the pay-by-data-transfer metering method. By default, basic bandwidth plans that use the pay-by-data-transfer metering method are not available. To use these plans, contact your account manager.

IP versions of accelerated IP addresses

You can specify an acceleration area and select the IP version of an accelerated IP address only if you select EIP as the type of the accelerated IP address. If you select Anycast EIP as the type of accelerated IP address, only IPv4 is supported.

After you add an acceleration area, GA assigns an accelerated IP address to each acceleration region in the acceleration area based on the IP version that you selected.

You can select one of the following IP protocols:

IPv4: assigns IPv4 addresses. The IPv4 addresses are used to accelerate IPv4 services for IPv4 clients.
IPv6: assigns IPv6 addresses. The IPv6 addresses are used to accelerate IPv4 services for IPv6 clients.
Dual Stack: assigns IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. This allows IPv4 and IPv6 clients to connect to GA at the same time.
Note
- Global Accelerator supports IPv6 clients only in the following regions: China (Qingdao), China (Beijing), China (Hangzhou), China (Shanghai), China (Shenzhen), China (Heyuan), China (Guangzhou), China (Chengdu), China (Hong Kong), Singapore, US (Virginia), and Germany (Frankfurt).
- Before you select dual-stack for an acceleration region, take note of the following limits:
  - The GA instance must be a pay-as-you-go standard GA instance.
  - The acceleration region must support IPv6.
  - The ISP line type must be BGP (Multi-ISP).
  - The listener must be an intelligent routing listener.

Bandwidth of acceleration regions

The bandwidth of an acceleration region is throttled based on the bandwidth that is allocated to the region.

Limits

The bandwidth that can be allocated to each acceleration region is determined by the billing method and the bandwidth metering method of a Global Accelerator instance. The bandwidth that can be allocated to each acceleration region of a subscription GA instance is determined by the specifications of the GA instance.

Billing method

Bandwidth metering method

Limits

Pay-as-you-go

Pay-by-data-transfer

Each acceleration region supports a bandwidth that ranges from 2 to 10,000 Mbit/s.

If you use the pay-by-data-transfer metering method, the maximum bandwidth that you specify is used for bandwidth throttling and the data transfer fees are managed by Cloud Data Transfer (CDT).

Note

The total bandwidth of all accelerated IP addresses in an acceleration region is equal to the maximum bandwidth that you specify for the acceleration region.

Subscription

Pay-by-bandwidth

The total bandwidth of all acceleration regions cannot exceed the maximum bandwidth of the subscription basic bandwidth plan that is associated with the GA instance.
You must allocate at least 2 Mbit/s of bandwidth to each acceleration region.
The bandwidth of an acceleration region is also determined by the maximum bandwidth of the GA instance. We recommend that the total bandwidth of all acceleration regions does not exceed the maximum bandwidth that is supported by the GA instance. Otherwise, packet losses may occur.
For more information about the maximum bandwidth that is supported by GA instances of different specifications, see the "Specifications of standard GA instances" section of the Overview of standard GA instances topic.

Note

Regions where endpoint groups are deployed have the following bandwidth limits:

The bandwidth of endpoint group regions of a subscription Global Accelerator instance is throttled based on the maximum bandwidth of the GA instance.
The bandwidth of endpoint group regions of a pay-as-you-go Global Accelerator instances is throttled based on the total bandwidth of all acceleration regions of the GA instance.

Line types of acceleration regions

You can select line types for Global Accelerator instances whose bandwidth metering method is pay-by-data-transfer.

BGP (Multi-ISP): provides premium BGP lines across the world. This is the default line type. BGP lines from different ISPs can be used. The optimal BGP line is automatically selected to ensure network stability.
All acceleration regions support BGP (Multi-ISP).
BGP Pro: BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro lines optimize data transmission to the Chinese mainland and improve connection quality for international services. Cross-border connections are established by using Chinese mainland ISP services when BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro lines provide services to users in the Chinese mainland (except data centers). This reduces network latency.
BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro is available only in the China (Hong Kong) and Japan (Tokyo) regions.

Acceleration areas and regions

Note

The regions in the following table are for reference only. You can view the actual regions that are supported by GA instances in the GA console.
By default, the following acceleration regions are unavailable: China (Heyuan), China (Nanjing), Brazil (Sao Paulo), Thailand (Bangkok), and Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh). To specify these acceleration regions, go to Quota Center to apply for the privilege named Accelerated regional whitelist. For more information, see the "Adjust quotas" section of the Manage GA quotas topic.

Acceleration areas and regions supported by pay-as-you-go Global Accelerator instances

Acceleration area	Region
North China	China (Qingdao) and China (Beijing)
South China	China (Shenzhen) and China (Guangzhou)
East China	China (Hangzhou) and China (Shanghai)
Southwest China	China (Chengdu)
North America	US (Silicon Valley), US (Virginia), Canada (Toronto), and Canada (Vancouver)
South America	Brazil (Sao Paulo)
Asia Pacific	China (Hong Kong), South Korea (Seoul), Singapore, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Japan (Tokyo), Indonesia (Jakarta), Philippines (Manila), Thailand (Bangkok), and Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh)
Europe	Germany (Frankfurt) and UK (London)

Acceleration areas and regions supported by subscription Global Accelerator instances

Acceleration area	Region
North China	China (Qingdao) and China (Beijing)
South China	China (Shenzhen), China (Heyuan), and China (Guangzhou)
East China	China (Hangzhou), China (Shanghai), and China (Nanjing)
Southwest China	China (Chengdu)
North America	US (Silicon Valley), US (Virginia), Canada (Toronto), and Canada (Vancouver)
South America	Brazil (Sao Paulo)
Asia Pacific	China (Hong Kong), South Korea (Seoul), Singapore, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Japan (Tokyo), Indonesia (Jakarta), Philippines (Manila), Thailand (Bangkok), and Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh)
Europe	Germany (Frankfurt) and UK (London)