How to reduce SSL handshake time?

Hi There

Are you monitoring the performance of the EC2 instance? Are you seeing increased load or resource exhaustion? One thing you can try is placing an Application Load Balancer in front of your EC2 instance and offloading SSL. This way your EC2 instance does not need the extra resources for encryption, its all handled by the load balancer.

Additional Resources:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/application-load-balancer-getting-started.html

Hi,

I agree with the previous suggestion that using an Application Load Balancer may speed up your SSL handshake (among other benefits).

I will also suggest that https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/getting-started/EC2/ will likely speed up your SSL handshake. This is because the client's TLS is terminated at an edge location geographically closer to the client. It may also speed up other aspects of your site/portal/service because the communication from the edge location to your EC2 instance will take place over the Amazon network rather than the general Internet.

Also, I see documentation that TLS v1.3 has a faster handshake than TLS v1.2, so perhaps make sure your site supports TLS v1.3.

Regards, Ryan