AWS Direct Connect
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
Direct Connect is a physical, dedicated cable from your data center to AWS. No public internet, no shared bandwidth, no 'hope for the best' latency. It's like having a private highway to the cloud while everyone else is stuck in traffic. Expensive to set up, but when you need consistent low latency and high throughput, it's the move.
Real Talk
AWS Direct Connect establishes a dedicated network connection from your premises to AWS. It provides consistent network performance with reduced bandwidth costs for high-volume workloads. Connections are available in 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps dedicated, or 50 Mbps to 10 Gbps hosted connections through AWS Direct Connect partners.
When You'll Hear This
"We use Direct Connect for our hybrid cloud setup — can't have VPN latency spikes." / "Direct Connect gives us a dedicated 10 Gbps pipe to AWS."
Related Terms
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is how wide your internet pipe is — how much data can flow through per second. A narrow pipe means slow speeds, a wide pipe means fast speeds.
Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid cloud is the mix of using your own on-premise servers AND cloud services at the same time.
Latency
Latency is the delay before data starts moving — the time it takes for a request to go from your device to the server and back.
VPN (Virtual Private Network)
A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel from your device to a server somewhere else.