How do I reduce costs for Direct Connect?

Resolution

Choose the right bandwidth capacity for your connection

To determine the correct bandwidth capacity, take the following actions:

• Make sure that your capacity aligns with your throughput requirements.
• Measure your daily throughput between your on-premises network and AWS to choose the most cost-effective option. For example, AWS Site to Site VPN or a lower port speed might be the most cost-effective option.
• Don't over use your network resources. You're charged for the full capacity of your connection regardless of usage.

For example, if your daily throughput averages about 100 Mbps, a 200 Mbps connection might be more cost-effective than a 300 Mbps or higher capacity connection.

Reduce port hour costs

Port hour charges are based on how much time you use a port. You're charged even when no data is passing through the ports.

The following factors affect port hour costs:

• Dedicated connections and hosted connections have different prices.
• Higher capacity ports usually have higher hourly rates.
• Prices vary by geographic location.

For more information, see AWS Direct Connect pricing.

To reduce port hour costs, take the following actions:

• If you don't require the full capacity of a dedicated connection, then use hosted connections.
• Consolidate multiple lower-capacity connections into a single higher-capacity connection.
• Compare prices across different AWS Regions and choose the most cost-effective Region.

Reduce DTO costs

Data transfer out (DTO) costs depend on the data source (by Region and AWS Local Zone) and destination (by Direct Connect location).

To reduce DTO costs for data-intensive workloads with frequent large data transfers, use Direct Connect instead of more commonly used services. For example, you can use Direct Connect instead of Site-to-Site VPN or Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

Note: Some Direct Connect DTO rates are lower than Amazon EC2 DTO internet rates. For example, the Direct Connect DTO rate for us-east-1 is higher than it is for Amazon EC2 DTO. For more information, see AWS Direct Connect pricing and Amazon EC2 On-Demand pricing.

For more information about data transfer fees in different architectures, see Cost optimization pillar.

Reduce SiteLink costs

If you activate the SiteLink feature, then you're charged a fixed rate for each virtual interface even when you don't send or receive any data. SiteLink data transfer rates depend on your source and destination.

To reduce SiteLink costs, take the following actions:

• Activate SiteLink only for virtual interfaces that require direct connectivity between on-premises locations.
• Monitor your SiteLink usage and deactivate it for unused or low-traffic virtual interfaces.

Use Site-to-Site VPN or internet peering

You can also use either Site-to-Site VPN or internet peering instead of Direct Connect.

Site-to-Site VPN

If you must have private IP connectivity but can tolerate lower reliability, then use Site-to-Site VPN. Site-to-Site VPN has lower costs than Direct Connect, especially for lower bandwidth requirements. To improve resilience, you can use Site-to-Site VPN as a backup instead of two Direct Connect connections.

Note: Site-to-Site VPN traffic that travels over the public internet can affect performance and reliability.

Internet peering

If you can allow network traffic to travel over a public IP address without a service-level agreement (SLA), then use internet peering with AWS.

To set up public or private internet peering, complete the following steps:

1. Check if you have your own public IP address prefix. If your application can handle public IP address transit, then test your prefix.
2. Verify that you have devices in points of presence (PoP) or nearby internet exchanges.
3. Create a peering connection to submit a peering request.

Related information

AWS Direct Connect resiliency recommendations

AWS global infrastructure