Using the AWS global backbone as a private WAN

Given the ubiquitous presence and high quality of the AWS Global Network, many customers have sought to build a private WAN infrastructure on top of it. This has been possible for some time through the use of third-party appliances from the AWS marketplace. Companies such as Aviatrix, Cisco, and Palo Alto Networks can build an overlay on top of EC2 instances running in different regions and use the AWS backbone as transport between them.

Until recently, however, there wasn’t a native AWS service that could combine this with the power of AWS Direct Connect. Consider the following diagram. A customer has data centers in two different countries with AWS Direct Connect to their closest region and a gateway in the middle. It might make sense for some of the customer’s traffic to never enter the AWS region at all and head straight for the other on-premises data center:

Figure 8.21 – AWS Direct...