AWS Direct Connect (DX)

• Dedicated private connection from an on-premise data center to a VPC
• a physical connection (1/10/100 Gbps) links your internal network to an AWS Direct Connect location over a standard Ethernet fiber-optic cable
• More stable and secure than Site-to-Site VPN
• Access public & private resources on the same connection using Public & Private Virtual Interface (VIF) respectively
• with IPsec running over a direct connect as encryption
• it is a port allocation at a DX location
• billing ⇒ port hourly cost & outbound data transfer
• requires long provisioning time for physical able & no resilience
• low & consistent latency + high speeds + high throughtput
• architecture

AWS Direct Connect (DX%20c5aaf52bf51e4eeb90de215e19c23904/Untitled.png)

• Resilience and HA

  • single point of failure
    • DX location
    • DX router
    • Cross connect
    • Customer DX router
    • Extension
    • Customer premises
    • Customer Router

  AWS Direct Connect (DX%20c5aaf52bf51e4eeb90de215e19c23904/Untitled%201.png)

  • Improvement evolution1

    • independent & multiple router + connection

      AWS Direct Connect (DX%20c5aaf52bf51e4eeb90de215e19c23904/Untitled%202.png)

  • Improvement evolution2

    AWS Direct Connect (DX%20c5aaf52bf51e4eeb90de215e19c23904/Untitled%203.png)

  • Improvement evolution3

    AWS Direct Connect (DX%20c5aaf52bf51e4eeb90de215e19c23904/Untitled%204.png)

• public (virtual interface)VIF + IPsec VPN

  • encrypted & authenticated tunnel over DX
  • public VIF alone doesn’t offer any form of encryption
  • transit agnostic (DX/ public internet)
    • method of data transmission is irrelevant to the device or program’s function
    • can connect over public internet/ public VIF, VPN config are the same
    • Wide vendor support
    • more cryptographic overhead which limits speeds
    • can be used while DX is being provisioned/ as a DX backup

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