AWS Site-to-Site VPN
AWS Site-to-Site VPN, also referred to as AWS VPN, is a networking service of Amazon Web Services that lets users link their AWS cloud resources to their on-premises resources. It creates a secure tunnel between the on-site network and AWS, forming an alternative to AWS Direct Connect when using components covered in Amazon VPC Components.
Key points
- Enables users to link AWS cloud resources to their on-premises resources.
- Creates a secure tunnel between the on-site network and AWS networks.
- Requires a virtual private gateway on the AWS side and a customer gateway on the on-premises side.
- The customer gateway must be configured correctly to establish the Site-to-Site VPN connection successfully.
- Uses IPsec to encrypt traffic that travels over the public internet between the customer gateway and virtual private gateway, unlike the dedicated private connection used by Direct Connect.
- Can typically be established in minutes to hours, much faster than AWS Direct Connect, which can take weeks to provision; often deployed as a quick or backup connection while a Direct Connect connection is being set up.
- Each connection provisions two tunnels terminating at different endpoints on the virtual private gateway, providing automatic failover.
- Standard tunnel bandwidth is 1.25 Gbps; a Large Bandwidth Tunnel option supports up to 5 Gbps per tunnel for connections attached to a Transit Gateway or Cloud WAN.