AWS Direct Connect provides a low-latency connection that avoids public Internet, helping reduce network costs and enhance performance. It gives your on-premises network direct access to an AWS region or availability zone for maximum performance and cost efficiency.
Direct Connect requires both a physical connection from your network to AWS Direct Connect locations, and virtual configuration. Port hours and data transfer out (DTO) charges apply when making this arrangement.
What is AWS Direct Connect?
Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) AWS Direct Connect service creates a private network connection between your on-premises data center and an AWS Direct Connect location, bypassing the public Internet. Physical connections are established using standard Ethernet fiber-optic cables or similar technologies; once this physical link has been set up, AWS tools and services provide virtual interfaces which give access to various AWS cloud services.
AWS Direct Connect can often be significantly cheaper than using the public Internet for bandwidth-heavy workloads, especially due to latency issues when moving data across it. Furthermore, all data transferred through it will be charged at AWS data transfer rate rather than Internet data transfer rate – creating an unrivaled network experience!
AWS Direct Connect can help connect multiple AWS Regions over a private virtual interface, enabling data to move freely between locations without experiencing loss. This is particularly advantageous for businesses running applications requiring high levels of performance.
Direct Connect can also help organizations that have existing data centers that they want to continue leveraging alongside AWS infrastructure, providing a high-speed, low-latency connection that supports critical applications without needing additional connectivity infrastructure investments.
To take advantage of AWS Direct Connect, you need to work with one or more AWS Partner Network members or network providers that belong to this program in order to connect a router from your data center or colocation environment directly into an AWS Direct Connect location. Once connected, a virtual interface may either be created as public VIF for accessing public AWS services, or private VIF connecting your AWS Virtual Private Cloud environment.
Direct Connect resources can be organized more effectively when they have tags assigned, which help manage or categorize them. Each tag consists of a key and value, both of which you define. All API calls made against your Direct Connect resources are recorded by CloudTrail as events; additionally you can set Amazon Web Services CloudWatch alarms to track metrics like connection utilization.
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AWS Direct Connect Locations
With AWS Direct Connect, enterprise data travels directly between your network and AWS cloud via a dedicated physical connection – eliminating unpredictable performance variations and higher costs that come with public Internet usage.
Direct Connects allow your on-premises network to connect directly to an AWS router located within a colocation data center location, bypassing the public Internet and providing a high-performance and reliable connection that eliminates latency issues. By connecting via Direct Connect you can access any AWS service available in that region; such as Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Virtual Private Clouds (Amazon VPC).
Megaport provides direct connectivity to AWS through over 100 locations worldwide. When connecting via Megaport, you have access to various bandwidth options ranging from 1 Gbps, 2 Gbps, 5 Gbps and 10 Gbps hosted connections that you can scale on demand based on minute billing rates. Furthermore, hosted connections managed through Megaport’s portal can also be utilized for data transfers, application testing or any other business needs.
One leading insurance firm with offices in both New York and California uses Direct Connect to create a low latency, high-bandwidth connection between their on-premise data centers in each region (N. Virginia / N California) using VPCs hosted at these data centers – creating an economical yet secure solution that reduces operational costs while increasing security.
To set up Direct Connect, you’ll need a networking provider who is connected to AWS’ Network. You may work with either an APN member or with one outside. Once connected, work with them to connect a router from your data center, office or colocation environment directly into an AWS Direct Connect location and create hosted virtual interfaces which connect directly with public services or your VPC.
Fiber optic cables connect directly to an AWS router located in an AWS Direct Connect location. Once established, virtual interfaces can be created hosted over AWS Direct Connect for accessing various AWS services such as VPC, storage, etc. They use AWS router as gateway and bypass public Internet thus saving costs while increasing reliability and security.
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AWS Direct Connect Gateway
The AWS Direct Connect Gateway makes it possible for you to establish connectivity among various virtual interfaces (VIFs) across regions and VPCs in your account, bypassing public Internet when accessing VPCs – which helps lower network costs and latency for real-time applications that require stable, consistent connections.
A gateway is a router connected by IT team members to an AWS Direct Connect location within data centers, colocation centers or office environments. Once connected, it creates a direct link between your internal network and Amazon Web Services network via Ethernet fiber-optic cable connection – whether dedicated or hosted according to individual preference and need. Furthermore, it enables bridge between internal networks and Amazon VPCs, offering high bandwidth with low latency connectivity into AWS Cloud environment.
Connect the gateway to your own on-premises network using either a public or private Autonomous System Number (ASN), as long as it belongs to you; alternatively you could work with partners that own ASNs in AWS Partner Network and AWS Direct Connect Locations; alternatively you could connect through VPN connection. Two active sessions may also be configured simultaneously within each gateway which can either act as active/active or standby Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) sessions.
AWS Direct Connect provides a strong, private link between your on-premises infrastructure and Amazon Web Services cloud, creating a more predictable and reliable network experience than connecting over the public Internet. Furthermore, this technology may reduce costs as well as enhance performance of applications by decreasing how much data needs to be transferred across public Internet pipes.
If your network traffic demands are heavy between on-premises networks and AWS Cloud, Direct Connect connections may provide cost-effective and faster, more consistent network performance. They’re highly scalable too – supporting speeds of up to 100 Gbps! Direct Connect makes an ideal solution for businesses seeking low latency high bandwidth connectivity between their on-premises infrastructure and AWS Cloud, or powering applications requiring stable real time data connections such as video or other multimedia needs.
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AWS Direct Connect Virtual Interfaces
AWS Direct Connect provides a high-speed, secure, and reliable private connection from your on-premises network to Amazon Web Services allowing for hybrid networks with consistent performance for applications running between both environments without sacrificing security or latency. Furthermore, AWS Direct Connect serves as an economical way to bypass public Internet and reduce egress bandwidth fees.
Direct Connect allows you to securely access a specific or multiple Availability Zones within a region via virtual interface, while Amazon VPC-based resources, like EC2 instances or DynamoDB can also be accessed with ease through this secure virtual private connection. Direct Connect can support connections up to 10 Gbps while offering either public or private virtual interfaces (VIFs).
Hosted connections are physical Ethernet connections provided to you by an AWS Direct Connect Partner at their data center and used for any traffic between your network and an AWS Region. They are requested via either the management console or CLI and are billed by port-hour, with up to five VIFs connected at any one time with up to 100GBASE-LR4 ports that each VIF can connect with (for example S3) services.
Virtual interface that enables access to public or private Amazon Web Services resources through Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Available speeds for this interface include 1 Gbps, 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps speeds; it may also be used as host-to-host virtual interface to connect multiple VPCs in the same region; additionally these virtual interfaces support dual stack IPv4/IPv6 configurations and can run IPSec VPN tunnels for extra protection.
Direct Connect gateways enable you to easily connect to multiple Direct Connect connections within one region. They can act as transit gateways between regions or peering points for VPC-to-VPC connections in that region. They come as single or dual stack devices and support BGP multipath for failover. You can even configure one as part of your on-premises network to reduce BGP sessions and WAN costs.
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