AWS Direct Connect announces support for Link Aggregation
We are excited to announce support for 1G and 10G Link Aggregation Groups (LAG). Customers in US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Northern California), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Canada (Central), South America (São Paulo), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), and Asia Pacific (Seoul) regions can start using LAG to link existing connections on the same AWS device, or request new connections. Users who wish to purchase multiple ports, but treat them like a single managed connection can now use our LAG feature to do just this. In addition to ordering and managing bundles, you can now see when your ports fall on the same router so you can manage your network availability.
Prior to this launch customers ordering multiple connections to increase their bandwidth to/from an AWS resource had to create a virtual interface on each connection for each resource type (either public or VPC). This meant they had to manage BGP sessions for each connection. Many customers ran into limitations where their router could not handle so many simultaneous BGP sessions and were unable to support the bandwidth scale they needed due to control plane limitations on their router. Customers also had no visibility when their ports were on the same router or different routers. It was entirely possible that customers would end up with all of their ports on a single router, when they really preferred them on separate routers for redundancy.
Now with the release of Link Aggregation Groups, customers can order a group of ports that will be configured and managed as a single connection. This means they can have multiple ports with just a single BGP session. Traffic will load balance across these links, per flow, allowing the customer to easily manage their aggregate bandwidth. In addition to LAG bundles, customers can also see when their ports are on a redundant device or not. This now gives them an additional level of visibility into their applications availability.
AWS Direct Connect offers several benefits for customers:
It lowers bandwidth costs out of AWS, which is valuable for applications that have bulk data transfer requirements
It offers more consistent network performance over Internet-based connections for applications that require real-time data feeds
It provides an alternative means to connect to the AWS cloud for customers who may have security or compliance policies that prevent VPN connectivity to the cloud
Additional AWS Direct Connect locations are planned worldwide in 2017. For more details, including pricing, please refer to the AWS Direct Connect page and a list of frequently asked questions.