Connectivity to AWS

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC)

Imagine the millions of customers who use AWS services. Also, imagine the millions of resources that these customers have created, such as Amazon EC2 instances. With boundaries around all of these resources, network traffic would be able to flow between them unrestricted.

A networking service that you can use to establish boundaries around your AWS resources is Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC).

Amazon VPC enables you to provision an isolated section of the AWS Cloud. In this isolated section, you can launch resources in a virtual network that you define. Within a virtual private cloud (VPC), you can organize your resources into subnets. A subnet is a section of a VPC that can contain resources such as Amazon EC2 instances.

Internet gateway

To allow public traffic from the internet to access your VPC, you attach an internet gateway to the VPC.

An internet gateway is a connection between a VPC and the internet. You can think of an internet gateway as being similar to a doorway that customers use to enter the coffee shop. Without an internet gateway, no one can access the resources within your VPC.

What if you have a VPC that includes only private resources?

Virtual private gateway

Here’s an example of how a virtual private gateway works. You can think of the internet as the road between your home and the coffee shop. Suppose that you are traveling on this road with a bodyguard to protect you. You are still using the same road as other customers, but with an extra layer of protection.

The bodyguard is like a virtual private network (VPN) connection that encrypts (or protects) your internet traffic from all the other requests around it.

The virtual private gateway is the component that allows protected internet traffic to enter into the VPC. Even though your connection to the coffee shop has extra protection, traffic jams are possible because you’re using the same road as other customers.

A virtual private gateway enables you to establish a virtual private network (VPN) connection between your VPC and a private network, such as an on-premises data center or internal corporate network. A virtual private gateway allows traffic into the VPC only if it is coming from an approved network.

AWS Direct Connect

AWS Direct Connect is a service that enables you to establish a dedicated private connection between your data center and a VPC.

Suppose that there is an apartment building with a hallway directly linking the building to the coffee shop. Only the residents of the apartment building can travel through this hallway.

This private hallway provides the same type of dedicated connection as AWS Direct Connect. Residents are able to get into the coffee shop without needing to use public road shared with other customers.

The private connection that AWS Direct Connect provides helps you to reduce network costs and increase the amount of bandwidth that can travel through your network.