Global Accelerator:Terms

Acceleration area

The area where you want to accelerate content delivery. You can also specify regions in each acceleration area. You can select the region where clients are located or the region nearest to the clients as the acceleration region. For more information about the mapping between acceleration areas and regions, see Acceleration areas and regions for standard GA instances and Acceleration areas and regions for basic GA instances.

• The number of acceleration areas and acceleration regions that you can add to a standard GA instance varies based on the billing method:

  • Pay-as-you-go: The number depends on the acceleration areas and regions supported by GA.

  • Subscription: The number is determined by the instance specification.

• You can add only one acceleration area and one acceleration region to a basic GA instance.

Accelerated IP address

Clients can connect to the nearest acceleration region of the Alibaba Cloud global transmission network by sending requests to an accelerated IP address.

• Standard GA instances support the following types of accelerated IP addresses:

  • EIP: If you select EIP, the custom nearby access mode is used. You can specify an acceleration area and an acceleration region based on your business requirements. Each acceleration region separately provides an EIP.

  • Anycast EIP: If you select Anycast EIP, the automatic nearby access mode is used. You do not need to specify an acceleration area. GA provides a unified IP entry point across multiple regions around the world.

• By default, basic GA instances use EIPs as accelerated IP addresses.

  You can manually add multiple accelerated IP addresses to an acceleration region of a basic GA instance. You can specify the mappings between accelerated IP addresses and endpoints to distribute traffic to the corresponding backend services.

CNAME

The CNAME that is assigned to a GA instance.

Create a DNS record to map your custom domain name to the CNAME of your GA instance. This way, requests can be forwarded to GA and be accelerated.

• After you create a standard GA instance, a CNAME is automatically assigned to the GA instance.

• You do not need to configure CNAME records for basic GA instances.

Listener

A listener listens for connection requests and distributes the requests to endpoints based on the port and the routing type that you specify.

• Standard GA instances support the following routing types:

  • Intelligent routing: the default routing type of original listeners. Intelligent routing listeners automatically select a nearby and healthy endpoint group and forward client requests to the optimal endpoint in the endpoint group based on network latency.

  • Custom routing: Custom routing listeners can forward client requests to a specific IP address and port in the vSwitch that you specify based on the mapping between the listener port and the CIDR block of the backend vSwitch.

  You can select the protocol and the routing type of a listener based on your business requirements.

• You do not need to configure listeners for basic GA instances.

Endpoint group

You can create an endpoint group. Then, the system forwards client requests to the endpoint group based on the routing type of the listener. Each endpoint group is associated with a specific region. An endpoint group contains one or more endpoints.

• The types of endpoint groups that you can create for standard GA instances vary based on the routing type and protocol of the listener:

  • Intelligent routing listener: You can create multiple default endpoint groups and virtual endpoint groups.

    • Default endpoint group: The endpoint group that you configure when you create a listener is a default endpoint group.

      By default, a default endpoint group is associated with a default forwarding rule. You can also manually associate it with a custom forwarding rule.

    • Virtual endpoint group: After you create a listener, you can manually create a virtual endpoint group on the Endpoint Groups page.

      Virtual endpoint groups can be associated only with custom forwarding rules.

  • Custom routing listener: No distinction is made between endpoint group types.

• You do not need to configure listeners for a basic GA instance. You need to only add an endpoint group in a specific region to a basic GA instance.

  You can add only one endpoint group to a basic GA instance.

Endpoint

Endpoints are destinations of client requests.

• Standard GA instances support different types of endpoints based on where the backend services are deployed.

  Deployment location	Backend service types of endpoints
  On Alibaba Cloud	ECS ALB NLB CLB OSS ENI Custom private IP address Public IP address provided by Alibaba Cloud vSwitch This endpoint type is supported only by custom routing listeners.
  Non-Alibaba Cloud	Custom public IP address Custom domain name

  For more information, see Overview of endpoint groups and endpoints.

• Basic GA instances support the following types of endpoints:

  • ENI

  • ECS

  • CLB

  • NLB

  For more information, see Add and manage endpoint groups and endpoints for a basic GA instance.

Endpoint group IP address

After GA receives a client request, GA converts the client IP address to an endpoint group IP address, which is used to access the endpoint. This IP address takes effect when the connection between GA and the endpoint is over the Internet.

The endpoint group IP addresses associated with each GA instance are dedicated to the instance owner and are not shared with other GA users.

• After you configure endpoints for a standard GA instance, the system allocates at least four endpoint group IP addresses to each endpoint. The actual number of endpoint group IP addresses allocated to each endpoint varies based on the instance specification or workload. You can view the actual number in the GA console.

• Basic GA instances do not provide endpoint group IP addresses.