Integrate Amazon CloudFront

For production workloads that require global reach, consistent low latency, or more than a few hundred concurrent viewers, you can place Amazon CloudFront in front of your streaming endpoint.

CloudFront acts as the CDN layer: viewer requests hit CloudFront edge nodes globally, which cache content and forward cache misses to your MK.IO streaming endpoint as the origin. This reduces load on the endpoint and lowers latency for viewers worldwide.

How it fits together

Viewer → CloudFront Edge → MK.IO Streaming Endpoint → Your Cloud Storage

Your playback URLs change from pointing directly at the MK.IO endpoint to pointing at your CloudFront distribution domain. Everything else in your MK.IO workflow — assets, locators, streaming policies — stays the same.

Prerequisites

• An AWS account with permissions to create CloudFront distributions
• An MK.IO project on AWS with at least one streaming endpoint created and started. See Publish content for streaming.

Create a CloudFront distribution

Open CloudFront in the AWS Console

Sign in to the AWS Console and navigate to CloudFront. Click Create distribution.

Set the origin

The origin is your MK.IO streaming endpoint hostname.

• Origin domain: Enter the hostname of your MK.IO streaming endpoint (for example, <endpoint-name>.<region>.streaming.mediakind.com). Find this in MK.IO under Streaming Endpoints.
• Protocol: Select HTTPS only. MK.IO endpoints require HTTPS.
• Origin shield: Optional. Enable and choose the AWS region closest to your MK.IO deployment region to reduce origin load.

Configure the default cache behaviour

• Viewer protocol policy: Select Redirect HTTP to HTTPS or HTTPS only.
• Allowed HTTP methods: Select GET, HEAD. Streaming manifests and segments are read-only.
• Cache policy: Use CachingOptimized for most streaming content. If your streams use query-string token authentication or DRM signed URLs, use CachingDisabled or a custom policy that forwards the required query strings to the origin.
• Origin request policy: If your streaming policies use query strings (for example, DRM tokens or signed URLs), attach an origin request policy that forwards those query strings to the MK.IO origin.

Configure distribution settings

• Price class: Select the regions where CloudFront should serve content. Selecting all regions gives the widest global coverage.
• Web Application Firewall: Optional. Attach an AWS WAF Web ACL if you want to filter requests at the edge.
• Standard logging: Set Log delivery to Off unless you specifically need CloudFront access logs. Enabling logs — especially with CloudWatch — can generate high data volumes and unexpected costs.
• Default root object: Leave empty. MK.IO streaming manifests are accessed by path, not by a default file.

Create the distribution

Click Create distribution. CloudFront assigns a distribution domain in the format <id>.cloudfront.net. The distribution deploys globally within a few minutes — wait for the Last modified field to update before testing.

Update your playback URLs

Once the distribution is active, replace the MK.IO streaming endpoint hostname in your playback URLs with the CloudFront domain:

Before (direct to MK.IO endpoint):

https://<endpoint-name>.<region>.streaming.mediakind.com/<locator-id>/...

After (via CloudFront):

https://<id>.cloudfront.net/<locator-id>/...

If you configure a custom domain in CloudFront, use that domain instead.

Custom domain (optional)

To use your own domain (for example, cdn.example.com) instead of the .cloudfront.net domain:

1. Request a certificate for your domain in AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) in the us-east-1 region — CloudFront requires certificates in this region regardless of where your content is hosted.
2. In your CloudFront distribution, add your domain under Alternate domain names (CNAMEs) and attach the ACM certificate.
3. In your DNS provider, create a CNAME record pointing your domain to the .cloudfront.net distribution domain.

For detailed steps, see the AWS CloudFront custom domains documentation.