Edge Computing
Running compute close to users (at CDN edge locations) instead of a central region — for low latency and less origin load.
Edge computing runs code at locations physically close to users — the same globally-distributed points of presence a CDN uses — instead of only in a central datacenter. Requests are handled near the user, cutting round-trip latency and offloading the origin.
Worked example: an edge function rewrites a request, checks auth, or personalizes a response in a city near the user in a few milliseconds, rather than sending every request across the world to one region. Gotcha: the edge is a constrained environment — limited runtime, execution time, and often no direct database access — and state is hard (your data usually lives in one region), so the edge suits stateless, latency-sensitive work (routing, auth, caching), not heavy stateful compute.