-: Hey, everyone and welcome back

to the Knowledge Full Video series.

So continuing our journey with the networking section.

Today we'll have a overview about Direct Connect.

Now, Direct Connect is a pretty important topic

as far as the exams are concerned, and when it comes

to the advanced networking specialty certification,

Direct Connect is one of the most important topic.

So let's go ahead

and understand the necessity of Direct Connect.

Now, in the normal communication,

let's assume you have a customer and you have a VPC in AWS.

So if you want to connect to the VPC, what happens

behind the scenes is the internet comes into the picture.

So this is the internet

and then you route your traffic through the internet

and you get the data back through the internet.

So this is how most of the communication works.

Now, when you talk about internet,

the packet basically travels in hops.

So there are a lot of routers

which are present all over the place.

And let's assume I have my client in India

and server somewhere in Oregon.

So the packets will actually have to travel

in hops all over the world to reach to the Oregon region.

And as you might have assumed,

it leads to a lot of latency as well.

So let me just show you on what do I mean by that.

So here I have done a simple trace route

around 17 hops for my packet to reach the Google server.

So this is the first hop, from first hop to second hop.

So you can assume,

like this is a first router, from first router to second,

second to third, third to fourth, and so on.

So total, there were 10 hops which were required

for my package to reach from client to destination.

Now, it actually sometimes goes much more higher.

Certain times, a lot of clients, they host their websites

in North Virginia or Ireland or even Oregon.

And to reach there, it actually requires

like 20 hops or sometimes 25 hops.

And that leads to a lot of latency

and the website basically starts to get slow.

And this is the reason why this approach is definitely good.

But certain times when there are critical applications

where latency is one of the most important,

then internet is something which is not preferred ideally.

So let's look into the challenges.

First is internet is good option

if amount of traffic is within a certain limit.

Now, there are always latency which are involved

if you go through the internet way.

Now, many of the organization have hybrid architecture,

like some of the servers are in data centers.

Some of the servers are in AWS.

In one of the companies that I used to work with,

we had a hybrid architecture, like some

and some of the application servers were in the AWS Cloud.

And both the servers needed to communicate

for the website to work properly.

So for the client request to complete successfully,

both the servers in the data center,

in the AWS and the network connectivity should be optimal

for the things to work in a idle manner.

Now, if the network connectivity

between the data center and the VPC, let's assume ISP,

so if the ISP is down or if the ISP is slow,

then the entire website gets hampered.

That is one thing.

If the ISP is not providing good bandwidth

as was requested, again the website becomes slow.

So there are a lot of challenges

when you go through the internet,

specifically if you have your infrastructure,

both in data center and in cloud

and both of them needs communication.

So many of the organizations are following this approach

and this is the reason why AWS came up

with a new feature of Direct Connect.

So in order to solve this challenge,

AWS introduced Direct Connect.

So AWS Direct Connect lets customer establish

a dedicated direct network connection

from the client's network

and one of the Direct Connect locations.

So what you do is you have a data center here,

like a leased line from the data center to the VPC.

And thus, you bypass the internet.

And this is very, very effective

because you don't really have to worry

about things slowing down or other things.

You have a Direct Connect, you have a extremely fast network

between your data center and your VPC,

and you go ahead and implement a hybrid architecture

or whatever you want to implement.

So there are a lot of benefits of Direct Connect connection.

First is that having direct connection

between the customers data center

to AWS brings tremendous amount of benefits.

Some of them includes consistent network performance.

So I'm sure many of you must be familiar,

like if you have your Wi-Fi,

you will not get fast speed all the time.

Certain times you will get very slow speed.

Certain times the Wi-Fi will not work only.

So that is inconsistent network performance.

So when you go with Direct Connect,

you have a consistent network performance

because that amount of bandwidth is allocated to you

and it is not overused.

That is first part.

Second is reduced bandwidth cost.

So again, this we can refer to the ISP.

Now, generally when you go

at your home, they have various plans,

plans for 30 GB plan for 40 GB, plan for 100 GB.

The more higher you go, the more money you have to pay.

And same way when you go to data center,

the more higher you go, you have to pay a lot of money.

And when you go for the Direct Connect connection,

since this is a something

like a leased line which is directly connected,

you don't really have to pay a very high cost.

The cost of bandwidth is much more lesser

than that of the ISP.

So this is second.

Third is private connectivity to your VPC.

And this is also quite good because you don't have to worry

about man-in-the-middle attacks or other things.

You have a direct dedicated line to your VPC.

So these are a few benefits.

Now actually, let me show you.

So this is the architecture of the Direct Connect connection

where on the left-hand side you have your data center,

and on the right-hand side, you have your Amazon VPC,

and in the middle, you have a Direct Connect provider.

So what you do is you connect a line from your data center

to a Direct Connect provider,

and the Direct Connect provider

has a dedicated fiber optics like line to the AWS.

So all you have to worry

is about connecting your data center

to one of the Direct Connect providers.

you have to contact some Direct Connect provider

who will help you in establishing line

between your data center and then,

and after that, you don't have to worry,

they'll take care of the other section.

So now let's go ahead

and quickly explore the Direct Connect console.

So within the services, let's open up the Direct Connect.

Now, one thing that you'll notice here

is that the Direct Connect here is a global service.

And when you go ahead and create a connection,

you can do it at a regional level.

So let's go ahead and quickly open up the connections.

And here you see

that there are no connections that are available.

So in order to create a connection,

you can click on this specific button.

And now there are two types here.

One is the classic and second one is the connection wizard.

So let's use the classic one first.

So name, let's quickly just call it as kplabs-testing.

The next important part is the location.

So there are multiple locations that you'll see over here.

Let's look into the one that is associated

with the India region.

So you have one in Mumbai, so let's go ahead and use that.

Now, within the port speed,

there are two primary port speeds that are available.

Now, depending upon the bandwidth that you need

between your data center and AWS via the Direct Connect,

you can go ahead and use any one among them.

So for our testing, let's use one Gbps,

and let's just de-select connect

through AWS connection partner for the time being.

Once done, you can go ahead and create a connection.

Now, as soon as the connection is created,

you see that it goes to the request state stage.

Now, do note that whenever you set up

a Direct Connect connection,

you have to connect your data center environment

with a Direct Connect provider.

And for this, one of the first step that is needed

is the approval.

So once you get the approval from the AWS site, in fact,

let me show you the steps.

So if you look into how it works, first, you can go ahead

and decide the Direct Connect location

and the connection size.

This is something that we have already done.

So the location is GPX Mumbai, India

and the bandwidth is one Gbps.

Now, once you do that, the state goes

to the requested and after it gets approved,

then you get a specific letter of authorization,

also referred to as the LOA.

And once you get this LOA, then you can go ahead

and connect with the Direct Connect provider to further look

So for today's video, we'll keep it simple.

I hope at a high-level overview,

you understood the benefits that an organization can get

if they are making use of Direct Connect.