Amazon S3 bucket can be configured easily to serve through it's Global Content Delivery System - Amazon Cloud front.  It is very easy to configure and use.  Advantage of using a CDN is that your images will get loaded faster in all geographies.  The way CDN works is, it creates geographically distributed local copies of files and as long as you are using the CDN url (different from S3 url for the same resource)  images will load equally fast on the browser irrespective of from which part of the world someone is viewing your WalkInto.  CDN ensures the delivery happens from a server closest to the browser.


  • S3 hosting is a cheaper but slower solution.
  • Connecting S3 bucked to Amazon Cloud Front overcomes performance bottlenecks associated with geography.
  • It costs extra to use CDN.
  • You should consider using a CDN to ensure your WalKinto loads fast everywhere.


Login to you Amazon Web Services console and go to the Cloud front configuration




Click on 'Create Distribution' button




When prompted to select the delivery method, Choose 'Web'. Click on 'Get Started' to continue



You will get a screen with a lot of input fields.  Don't worry it's not as bad as it looks



Click on the input for 'Origin Domain Name'.  You will get a dropdown with your S3 buckets.  Pick the  'walkinto' bucket you configured earlier.




Now you can skip the rest of the settings with default values and scroll down to 'Distribution' settings.  You have some commercial decisions to make here.  We highly recommend using the Amazon cost calculator to get an idea of how much it might cost.  



For example, say you have 2000 panos hosted on S3 and your Walkinto is one of the most popular tours on the system with patrons from every continent and your viewers thoroughly enjoyed your tours by going into every Pano and every zoom level then your average monthly cost will be around $20.


Click 'Create Distribution'



Depending on the bucket size, it might take a bit of time for the CDN creation to complete.  Stay on the screen till it says all is good.





My S3 bucket looks like this



After configuring the new CDN, I can use the URL of the CDN in Walkinto to acces a Pano Folder.  For example sa 'PANO_testpano' will be available for me to import in WalkInto at URL


http://d3iizp3sbfj7rq.cloudfront.net/PANO_testpano/    | This is your CDN URL


The equivalent S3 Pano Folder URL, that DOES NOT offer a fast global delivery is this.


https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/walkinto/PANO_testpano/   | This is your S3 URL with no CDN support.


Make sure that you are using the CDN url for importing panorama to WalkInto once you have setup your Cloud Front domain.



Congratulations!  You just created a new CDN and connected it to your WalkInto S3 bucket.  You can now ensure fast delivery of your images globally.  Any new folders or images uploaded to your CDN also will be automatically available in your CDN.