Press enter or click to view image in full size
Send data between different AWS VPC with our new feature Inter Region Connect.
It’s a revolutionary way to connect AWS-regions, achieving a predictable, high performance.
The connection is created over a selectable network — you can choose between the providers Hibernia and Cogent, based on your network and business requirements.
What is Inter Region Connect
The Inter Region Connect (IRC) is a dedicated connection between two VPCs in two different regions. It enables users of the IRC to directly send data over the protected network. The users have specific properties for this connection like reserved bandwidth. Whenever the user is sending data over that link, there is an available bandwidth and a possibility to send as much data and as fast as it is defined.
For which use cases could it be valuable? Mainly, it comes into play when you have global applications with multiple regions. It is very expensive if your customers have a bad user experience. Using the Inter Region Connect, you can be sure that you have a predictable, high performance that improves a quality of your service.
Currently, the IRC is available for us-east-1 (Virginia), eu-central-1 (Frankfurt) and eu-west-1 (Ireland) AWS-regions.
Press enter or click to view image in full size
“If you have a database somewhere in Northern Virginia and users in the other parts of the world, for example, in Germany, or in the UK, you will want to serve their requests locally instead of sending them over the public Internet to an API in Virginia. With the Inter Region Connect, you will be able to create a protected connection between those regions. It will guarantee secure dedicated bandwidth with predictable performance due to the use of AWS Direct Connect,” — Sebastian Spies, CEO, Datapath.io.
How to use Inter Region Connect
The IRC comes as an add-on feature to the main Datapath.io product — console for network optimization.
Set up the IRC in 3 easy steps:
1) Sign in into Datapath.io console (if you don’t have an account, see the tutorial here).
Press enter or click to view image in full size
2) Go to the Inter Region Connect to select VPCs from different regions.
Press enter or click to view image in full size
3) Choose the provider and bandwidth. Price depends on the amount of bandwidth as well as on a provider that defines connectivity. For example, between two VPCs from Frankfurt to Ireland, you will have 100 Mbit/s for 0.05$ if you go over provider Cogent. But between the same regions at 100 Mbit/s and another provider, you can get another price. Performance and quality also affect the price.
Press enter or click to view image in full size
You have the opportunity to test Inter Region Connect one day for free. After that, you will be charged on a monthly base.
Advantages of Inter Region Connect
More bandwidth, less latency.
With Datapath.io the data always stays inside of the network. It goes the same optimized route, guarantees the predictable performance, security and better users experience.
You have a path, and multiple users can use that path, but you also have a reserved bandwidth on each connection. It gives much more flexibility and, on the other hand, the same performance like you will get having a dedicated cable. In that case, the IRC can be compared to the MPLS-connection.
Inter Region Connect VS. VPN-options
In our previous blog post, we’ve already mentioned that AWS doesn’t provide any good tools for connecting the VPCs in different regions, and suggested VPN-options for interconnection. In comparison to the Inter Region Connect, VPN-options have several drawbacks. Firstly, it goes over the public internet, resulting in unpredictable, bad performance. Secondly, VPN has an encryption. When you go over the Direct Connect, you will get the same security without need for encryption, which limits the amount of traffic that you can send. Use our new IRC feature to save on encryption and send out as much traffic as you want.