S3 Performance | S3 Byte-Range Fetches

Amazon S3 Performance – Byte-Range Fetches

Byte-Range Fetches in Amazon S3 allow twtech to retrieve specific portions (byte ranges) of an object instead of the entire object. This is especially powerful for large files, enabling faster, parallel, and efficient downloads.

 The concept:  Byte-Range Fetches

A byte-range fetch uses the Range HTTP header to request only a portion of an object:

# vbnet

GET /my-object.txt HTTP/1.1

Host: twtech-s3bucket.s3.amazonaws.com

Range: bytes=0-999

This fetches bytes 0 to 999 (the first 1KB) of the object.

 Performance Benefits

Benefit	Description
Parallel Downloads	Download multiple parts of a large file concurrently using multiple threads.
Resilience	Failed part downloads can be retried individually instead of re-downloading the full file.
Resume Downloads	Resume interrupted transfers by requesting only the missing byte ranges.
Reduced Latency	Faster initial response, especially useful for streaming or previewing content.
Cost Optimization	Reduces transfer costs by downloading only what’s needed.

 twtech recommendation to use Byte-Range Fetches

• Downloading large media files, e.g., videos, images, or logs.
• Implementing a video player with seeking capability (e.g., play from minute 10).
• Data processing frameworks that work on chunks of large datasets.
• Mobile or limited-bandwidth environments where partial loading is advantageous.

 Implementation Example (Using Boto3 for Python)

# python

import boto3

s3 = boto3.client('s3')

response = s3.get_object(

    Bucket='twtech-s3bucket',

    Key='large-file.zip',

    Range='bytes=0-1048575'  # First 1 MB

)

data = response['Body'].read()

 Considerations

• twtech can’t use byte-range fetches on objects stored in Glacier Deep Archive without restoring them first.
• Range limits: twtech can’t request more than 5GB in a single GET request, even with ranges.
• Best used with concurrent threading or async I/O for maximum throughput.

 Use Case Example: Parallel Fetching Strategy

If twtech has a 1GB file, it would:

• Split it into 10 chunks of 100MB.
• Fetch each range in parallel:

# makefile

 

bytes=0-104857599

bytes=104857600-209715199

...

Then reassemble the parts client-side.