AWS Direct Connect - BGP - Static Routes only?

Question

BGP is said to be necessary for Direct Connect, so we plan to setup BGP. 
Can we have just Static Routes only and advertise no routes over BGP. Will this still work.?
If more specifics needed, we plan to use this over a Private Interface, and connecting to onPrem over a Hosted connection.  
I am happy/thankful if someone answers just the above one question. 
but had a more generic question here if some knew under-the-hoods stuff of AWS infra: What could be the technical reason that AWS made BGP mandatory? If we were to setup our Private Cloud on a colocation center, we would have been able to set it like we were extending our onPrem network. In case we have a simple onPrem-AWS setup, bgp sounds extra/overkill. I am not a network expert, so asking to know more.

Accepted Answer

You would have to advertise your routes over BGP, this is the only way on-prem would learn AWS VPC CIDR (subnet) and it's also the only way that AWS Direct Connect endpoint will learn on-prem CIDR.

As for your second question, the size of AWS network make BGP is a must to make all the traffic engineering possible.

Answer

100% agree with the answer from Matt_E but there is a slight wrinkle here.

Because you're using a Direct Connect hosted connection (which means that a Direct Connect partner is providing the connectivity between your network and the AWS network) they are the ones who **must** use BGP.

Where they connect to you, they (and you) can choose to use whatever routing protocol works for both of you. Normally (in about 100% of the cases that I've seen) that is also BGP. But you might ask them what else they support. It is highly unlikely that they will support static routing but you can always ask.

AWS Direct Connect - BGP - Static Routes only?

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