Amazon VPC User Guide

What this guide covers

The Amazon VPC User Guide is AWS's official documentation for Amazon Virtual Private Cloud. AWS describes a VPC as a logically isolated virtual network you define, which closely resembles a traditional network in your own data centre, with the benefits of AWS's scalable infrastructure. The guide covers every building block of AWS networking:

• VPCs and subnets: a subnet is a range of IP addresses in your VPC and must sit in a single Availability Zone.
• IP addressing: IPv4 and IPv6 for VPCs and subnets, including bringing your own addresses.
• Routing: route tables that decide where traffic from a subnet or gateway goes.
• Gateways and endpoints: internet gateways, NAT gateways and VPC endpoints for reaching AWS services privately.
• Peering and Transit Gateway: connecting VPCs directly, or through a central hub that also terminates VPNs and Direct Connect.
• Flow logs and Traffic Mirroring: recording and copying traffic for monitoring and security.
• Site-to-Site VPN: connecting your VPCs to on-premises networks.

Why a network engineer should read it

Cloud networking is ordinary networking exposed through an API. The guide maps directly onto what you already know: subnets are subnets, route tables use longest prefix match, NAT gateways do PAT, and hybrid links use IPsec and BGP. Reading it with a networking background makes AWS networking fast to learn, and it explains the AWS-specific rules, such as a subnet being public only because its route table points to an internet gateway, and peering not being transitive.

What costs money

The guide is clear on pricing: there is no additional charge for using a VPC itself, but some components are charged, such as NAT gateways, IP Address Manager, Traffic Mirroring, Reachability Analyzer and Network Access Analyzer. Public IPv4 addresses are also charged, with some Free Tier usage included for EC2. Check the Amazon VPC pricing page before you build a lab, set a billing alert, and delete NAT gateways and unused public addresses when you finish a session.

How to use it

Do not read it front to back. Build a small network, a VPC with public and private subnets in two zones, and read the relevant section as you create each part. Then add a NAT gateway, flow logs and a peering connection, reading as you go. The "Plan your VPC" and "Create a VPC" pages are good starting points, and every account already has a default VPC in each region to explore.

Common questions

Is this enough to learn AWS networking? It is the reference. Pair it with hands-on labs, such as those on AWS Skill Builder, and your own builds.

Does it cover Azure or Google Cloud? No. The ideas carry over, but each provider has its own names and rules; Azure calls its network a VNet.

Do I need a paid account? You can read everything for free. Building needs an AWS account, and some components cost money.