The AWS Network - How Does It Actually Work!?

In this tablet talk we are going to discuss how the underlying AWS network actually works. This will be an advanced conversation that will describe how traffic moves through the VPC, from the internal IP spaces to the external world, as well as how instance to instance communication takes place. There are a few hidden AWS services that make all the magic happen behind the scenes, and we are going to talk about them in this tablet talk.

Learning objectives

• Learn how an IP packet is able to make it from one virtual host on its own physical server, to another virtual host on a different physical server
• Learn how the Mapping Service is able to facilitate communication within the VPC, as well as how Blackfoot is able to route traffic outside of the VPC

Intended Audience

This lesson is intended for anyone how wants to get a more advanced understanding of how the AWS network works.

Prerequisites

To get the most out of this lesson, you should have general knowledge about the following AWS services: VPC, EC2, Internet gateway, Direct Connect, Route53, S3, and VPC Peering. You should also understand the seven layers of the OSI model, at least at a high level.