How Amazon VPC works

With Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), you can launch AWS resources in a logically isolated virtual network that you've defined. This virtual network closely resembles a traditional network that you'd operate in your own data center, with the benefits of using the scalable infrastructure of AWS.

The following is a visual representation of a VPC and its resources from the Preview pane shown when you create a VPC using the AWS Management Console. For an existing VPC, you can access this visualization on the Resource map tab. This example shows the resources that are initially selected on the Create VPC page when you choose to create the VPC plus other networking resources. This VPC is configured with an IPv4 CIDR and an Amazon-provided IPv6 CIDR, subnets in two Availability Zones, three route tables, an internet gateway, and a gateway endpoint. Because we've selected the internet gateway, the visualization indicates that traffic from the public subnets is routed to the internet because the corresponding route table sends the traffic to the internet gateway.

VPCs and subnets

A virtual private cloud (VPC) is a virtual network dedicated to your AWS account. It is logically isolated from other virtual networks in the AWS Cloud. You can specify an IP address range for the VPC, add subnets, add gateways, and associate security groups.

A subnet is a range of IP addresses in your VPC. You launch AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, into your subnets. You can connect a subnet to the internet, other VPCs, and your own data centers, and route traffic to and from your subnets using route tables.

Default and nondefault VPCs

If your account was created after December 4, 2013, it comes with a default VPC in each Region. A default VPC is configured and ready for you to use. For example, it has a default subnet in each Availability Zone in the Region, an attached internet gateway, a route in the main route table that sends all traffic to the internet gateway, and DNS settings that automatically assign public DNS hostnames to instances with public IP addresses and enable DNS resolution through the Amazon-provided DNS server (see DNS attributes in your VPC). Therefore, an EC2 instance that is launched in a default subnet automatically has access to the internet. If you have a default VPC in a Region and you don't specify a subnet when you launch an EC2 instance into that Region, we choose one of the default subnets and launch the instance into that subnet.

You can also create your own VPC, and configure it as you need. This is known as a nondefault VPC. Subnets that you create in your nondefault VPC and additional subnets that you create in your default VPC are called nondefault subnets.

Route tables

A route table contains a set of rules, called routes, that are used to determine where network traffic from your VPC is directed. You can explicitly associate a subnet with a particular route table. Otherwise, the subnet is implicitly associated with the main route table.

Each route in a route table specifies the range of IP addresses where you want the traffic to go (the destination) and the gateway, network interface, or connection through which to send the traffic (the target).

Access the internet

You control how the instances that you launch into a VPC access resources outside the VPC.

A default VPC includes an internet gateway, and each default subnet is a public subnet. Each instance that you launch into a default subnet has a private IPv4 address and a public IPv4 address. These instances can communicate with the internet through the internet gateway. An internet gateway enables your instances to connect to the internet through the Amazon EC2 network edge.

By default, each instance that you launch into a nondefault subnet has a private IPv4 address, but no public IPv4 address, unless you specifically assign one at launch, or you modify the subnet's public IP address attribute. These instances can communicate with each other, but can't access the internet.

You can enable internet access for an instance launched into a nondefault subnet by attaching an internet gateway to its VPC (if its VPC is not a default VPC) and associating an Elastic IP address with the instance.

Alternatively, to allow an instance in your VPC to initiate outbound connections to the internet but prevent unsolicited inbound connections from the internet, you can use a network address translation (NAT) device. NAT maps multiple private IPv4 addresses to a single public IPv4 address. You can configure the NAT device with an Elastic IP address and connect it to the internet through an internet gateway. This makes it possible for an instance in a private subnet to connect to the internet through the NAT device, routing traffic from the instance to the internet gateway and any responses to the instance.

If you associate an IPv6 CIDR block with your VPC and assign IPv6 addresses to your instances, instances can connect to the internet over IPv6 through an internet gateway. Alternatively, instances can initiate outbound connections to the internet over IPv6 using an egress-only internet gateway. IPv6 traffic is separate from IPv4 traffic; your route tables must include separate routes for IPv6 traffic.

Access a corporate or home network

You can optionally connect your VPC to your own corporate data center using an IPsec AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection, making the AWS Cloud an extension of your data center.

A Site-to-Site VPN connection consists of two VPN tunnels between a virtual private gateway or transit gateway on the AWS side, and a customer gateway device located in your data center. A customer gateway device is a physical device or software appliance that you configure on your side of the Site-to-Site VPN connection.

Connect VPCs and networks

You can create a VPC peering connection between two VPCs that enables you to route traffic between them privately. Instances in either VPC can communicate with each other as if they are within the same network.

You can also create a transit gateway and use it to interconnect your VPCs and on-premises networks. The transit gateway acts as a Regional virtual router for traffic flowing between its attachments, which can include VPCs, VPN connections, AWS Direct Connect gateways, and transit gateway peering connections.

AWS private global network

AWS provides a high-performance, and low-latency private global network that delivers a secure cloud computing environment to support your networking needs. AWS Regions are connected to multiple Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as well as to a private global network backbone, which provides improved network performance for cross-Region traffic sent by customers.

The following considerations apply:

Network packet loss can be caused by a number of factors, including network flow collisions, lower level (Layer 2) errors, and other network failures. We engineer and operate our networks to minimize packet loss. We measure packet-loss rate (PLR) across the global backbone that connects the AWS Regions. We operate our backbone network to target a p99 of the hourly PLR of less than 0.0001%.