Global Accelerator (GA) is a high-availability and high-performance network acceleration service for global users. By leveraging the high-quality BGP bandwidth and global network infrastructure of Alibaba Cloud, GA allows service providers to deploy applications across regions and users to connect to the nearest access points for content delivery acceleration. This reduces network issues, such as network latency, network jitter, and packet loss.
Types of GA instances
Standard GA instances
Standard GA instances support multiple access modes and provide end-to-end acceleration services to improve the performance of applications that are used by a global audience.
Access modes
Standard GA instances allow you to accelerate access through an accelerated IP address or a CNAME. When a client connects to an accelerated IP address or CNAME, traffic is routed to the nearest access point of the Alibaba Cloud global transmission network.
Accelerated IP address
Elastic IP address (EIP): GA provides separate EIP based on acceleration regions. Users in each acceleration region can connect to GA through region-specific EIPs.
Anycast EIP: Users in multiple regions can connect to GA through a static IP address.
CNAME
The domain name that you want to accelerate is mapped to the CNAME that is allocated by GA to accelerate access to the backend service.
Acceleration network
Standard GA instances connect users in different acceleration regions to origin servers that are deployed in different regions and accelerate content delivery at Layer 4 (TCP and UDP) and Layer 7 (HTTP and HTTPS).
After GA receives client requests, GA forwards the client requests to endpoints based on the routing type of the listener to prevent network congestion and reduce latency and network jitter.
Origin server connection
The following network connections are supported when GA forwards client requests to endpoints:
Private network connection: This type of network connection is used for endpoints that are deployed on Alibaba Cloud. You can specify Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances, elastic network interfaces (ENIs), Classic Load Balancer (CLB) instances, Application Load Balancer (ALB) instances, Network Load Balancer (NLB) instances, Object Storage Service (OSS) buckets, and vSwitches as endpoints. This prevents endpoints from being exposed to the Internet and ensures the security of network connections.
Internet connection: This type of network connection is used for endpoints that are deployed outside Alibaba Cloud, including endpoints that are deployed in data centers and endpoints that are not supported by Alibaba Cloud. You can specify custom IP addresses and custom domain names as endpoints. For example, you can specify the CNAME of Web Application Firewall (WAF) as the custom domain name. WAF detects and filters malicious requests based on the protection policies that you configure and forwards trusted requests to the origin server. This ensures the security of your services.
Basic GA instances
Basic GA instances use the high-quality global network bandwidth and transmission network of Alibaba Cloud to provide point-to-point acceleration services.
Access modes
You can use only accelerated IP addresses to connect to basic GA instances. The accelerated IP addresses must be EIPs. Clients can connect to an access point of the Alibaba Cloud global transmission network by sending requests to an accelerated IP address.
Acceleration network
Basic GA instances provide one-to-one acceleration services between acceleration regions and origin server regions. Basic GA instances provide acceleration services only at Layer 3 (IP).
After client requests reach the Alibaba Cloud global transmission network, GA distributes traffic to endpoints based on the mappings between accelerated IP addresses and endpoints.
Origin server connection
GA forwards client requests to endpoints over private networks. You can specify secondary ENIs, CLB instances in VPCs, NLB instances, and Elastic Compute Service instances as endpoints.
Benefits
High quality
GA uses stable Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) lines, the global transmission network of Alibaba Cloud, and worldwide access points to reduce network latency, network jitters, and packet loss. This greatly improves user experience.
High availability
GA allows you to manage network traffic that is routed across regions and distributed to multiple endpoints. This prevents service disruptions caused by failures of individual regions or connections and improves network stability. GA continuously monitors the health status of all endpoints and automatically schedules network traffic to ensure service continuity.
High security and reliability
GA allows you to set network access control lists (ACLs) and use Alibaba Cloud security services to protect applications and endpoints from attacks.
Easy deployment
GA is easy to configure and can be deployed within a few minutes. Resources are monitored and maintained in a centralized manner. This mechanism simplifies the deployment process.
Free trial
GA instances and bandwidth plans of specific specifications are free of charge for the first month. You can apply for a free trial before 00:00:00 (UTC+8) on April 1, 2025. For more information about the one-month free trials of GA, see Time-limited one-month free trials of GA.