Amazon CloudFront vs Squid

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network for delivering data, videos, applications, and APIs around the world. It uses more than 750 globally dispersed Points of Presence, with automated network mapping and intelligent routing. CloudFront works with Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Elastic Load Balancing, and custom HTTP origins; edge behavior can be customized with CloudFront Functions and AWS Lambda@Edge. Listed uses range from websites and dynamic APIs to live and on-demand video, software distribution, game patches, and IoT updates. Security options include HTTPS/TLS, signed URLs and cookies, token authentication, geographic restrictions, and limiting S3 origin access to CloudFront. It integrates with AWS Shield, AWS WAF, and Amazon Route 53 for layered protection, including against DDoS attacks. CloudWatch metrics and logs to S3 or Kinesis Data Streams provide monitoring options. CloudFront has a free plan at free, with 1 million requests and 100GB data transfer. Paid plans start at $15 a month per distribution; Pro, Business, and Premium each list 50TB of transfer.

Squid is a self-hosted caching proxy for web traffic. It keeps commonly requested pages and other supported data available for reuse, helping reduce bandwidth and improve response times. Squid handles HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and gopher data; supported cache engines also include ICP and HTCP. Administrators can apply access controls and use full request logging. Squid can accelerate servers, direct content among web servers, and organize content clusters for load balancing. Multiple caches can be connected as a mesh or hierarchy through parent and sibling links. Proxy authentication options include Basic, NTLM, Digest, and Negotiate, with bundled helpers for LDAP, SQL databases, PAM, RADIUS, and Windows domains. Basic authentication encodes credentials with Base64 rather than encrypting them, so credentials are effectively cleartext between browser and proxy. Squid is free to download, use, and modify, and is distributed under GPL version 2, with some components under compatible open-source licenses. It is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows, with installation through operating-system packages, source releases, and binaries. Documentation, a wiki, bug tracking, and mailing lists are available.