Amazon expands direct-to-cloud links

Amazon Web Services customers will now have further options of connecting directly to the cloud computing provider's data centres via its Direct Connect service, instead of going over the public internet.

Direct Connect is now available at the Seattle Equinix data centre, and also to the AWS GovCloud in the US, which is a region designed for specific regulatory and compliance requirements of controlled, unclassified information.

The main benefit of using a private network connection to the AWS is lower cost, Amazon claims, as well as improved bandwidth and more consistent experience and performance. Direct Connection doesn't however provide onward connectivity to the public internet.

Once the connection is active, Amazon charges for AWS Direct Connect by the hour and port. The cost for a 1Gbps port at the Equinix data centre in Sydney is US$0.30 per hour; a 10Gbps port costs US$2.25 per hour.

Data transfer charges to and from Sydney cost US0.045 per gigabyte for outbound traffic. Incoming traffic is zero-rated however and there are no limits as to how much data can be sent and received, nor are there set up charges or cancellation fees.

Direct Connect can be used with all Amazon services such as the Elastic Compute Cloud, Virtual Private Cloud, S3 storage service and Dynamo Database, the cloud provider said.

Schematic of AWS Direct Connect. Source: Amazon

Technical requirements for AWS Direct Connect include support for 802.1Q VLANs and physical connections using single mode fibre-optic cable with 1000BASE-LX for 1Gbps Ethernet service and 10GBASE-LX for the 10Gbps alternative, both at 1,310 nanometre wavelength.

Customer networks must also support border gateway protocol with MD5 authentication, AWS stated. Amazon also requires public or private Autonymous System Numbers and BGP advertised IP address blocks for AWS.