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  1. Stackups
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  3. Infrastructure as a Service
  4. Dns Management
  5. AWS Direct Connect vs Amazon Route 53

AWS Direct Connect vs Amazon Route 53

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Amazon Route 53
Amazon Route 53
Stacks14.5K
Followers9.4K
Votes678
AWS Direct Connect
AWS Direct Connect
Stacks39
Followers61
Votes0

AWS Direct Connect vs Amazon Route 53: What are the differences?

AWS Direct Connect vs Amazon Route 53

Introduction:

When it comes to cloud computing, Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a wide range of services to cater to different needs. Two such services are AWS Direct Connect and Amazon Route 53. While both play important roles in enhancing network connectivity and performance, they have key differences that set them apart. This article aims to outline the main disparities between AWS Direct Connect and Amazon Route 53.

  1. Connectivity Method: AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated network connection from an on-premises data center to AWS. It establishes a direct physical link, bypassing the public internet, which ensures a reliable and more secure connection. On the other hand, Amazon Route 53 is a scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service that connects user requests to AWS resources. It primarily manages domain names and translates them into IP addresses to direct traffic.

  2. Purpose: AWS Direct Connect is primarily designed for organizations that require a more consistent and low-latency connection to their AWS resources. It is commonly used for large data transfers, real-time data feeds, and sensitive workloads that demand enhanced network performance. In contrast, Amazon Route 53 is mainly used for global domain name management and routing traffic efficiently across various AWS resources, such as load balancers, EC2 instances, and S3 buckets.

  3. Service Scope: AWS Direct Connect is a regional service that operates within a specific AWS region. It provides connectivity options to resources within that region. On the other hand, Amazon Route 53 is a global service that supports routing across multiple regions. It allows users to distribute traffic globally and improve the availability of their applications.

  4. Network Traffic Handling: AWS Direct Connect handles network traffic by establishing a direct, private connection between on-premises infrastructure and AWS. It provides a consistent network experience with reduced latency and higher bandwidth for data transfer. On the contrary, Amazon Route 53 manages DNS resolution for domain names and routes traffic based on configurable routing policies, such as weighted, failover, or latency-based routing.

  5. Security and Privacy: AWS Direct Connect ensures a higher level of security and privacy by bypassing the public internet. By establishing a dedicated physical link, it reduces exposure to common internet security threats. In comparison, Amazon Route 53 does not provide the same level of security as it primarily deals with DNS routing and does not involve direct network connections.

  6. Pricing Model: The pricing model of AWS Direct Connect is based on the port speed, data transfer, and the region in which it is deployed. Users are charged for the physical network port and the amount of data transferred over the connection. In contrast, Amazon Route 53 follows a pay-per-use pricing model, where users are charged based on the number of DNS queries made and the amount of data transferred.

In summary, AWS Direct Connect is a dedicated network connection service used for reliable and secure connectivity to AWS resources, while Amazon Route 53 is a scalable DNS web service used for domain name management and efficient routing of traffic across AWS resources.

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Advice on Amazon Route 53, AWS Direct Connect

Eric
Eric

Service Engineer at Zix Corporation

Aug 5, 2020

Needs adviceonAmazon Route 53Amazon Route 53

We are looking for advice / best-practices / caveats about migrating off BIND on to Unbound https://nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unbound/about/ for internal & external (customer-facing) DNS. Is unbound suitable for this, or is it only recommended for caching? How easy or difficult is it to move 10000's of existing BIND DNS zone entries? We already use Amazon Route 53 for our AWS instances and Cloud DNS for our GCP ones, but would like to maintain internal DNS for cost, control, and latency reasons.

58.6k views58.6k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon Route 53
Amazon Route 53
AWS Direct Connect
AWS Direct Connect

Amazon Route 53 is designed to give developers and businesses an extremely reliable and cost effective way to route end users to Internet applications by translating human readable names like www.example.com into the numeric IP addresses like 192.0.2.1 that computers use to connect to each other. Route 53 effectively connects user requests to infrastructure running in Amazon Web Services (AWS) – such as an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance, an Amazon Elastic Load Balancer, or an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket – and can also be used to route users to infrastructure outside of AWS.

AWS Direct Connect makes it easy to establish a dedicated network connection from your premises to AWS. Using AWS Direct Connect, you can establish private connectivity between AWS and your datacenter, office, or colocation environment, which in many cases can reduce your network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than Internet-based connections.

Highly Available and Reliable – Route 53 is built using AWS’s highly available and reliable infrastructure. The distributed nature of our DNS servers helps ensure a consistent ability to route your end users to your application. Route 53 is designed to provide the level of dependability required by important applications. Amazon Route 53 is backed by the Amazon Route 53 Service Level Agreement.;Scalable – Route 53 is designed to automatically scale to handle very large query volumes without any intervention from you.;Designed for use with other Amazon Web Services – Route 53 is designed to work well with other AWS features and offerings. You can use Route 53 to map domain names to your Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon S3 buckets, Amazon CloudFront distributions, and other AWS resources. By using the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) service with Route 53, you get fine grained control over who can update your DNS data. You can use Route 53 to map your zone apex (example.com versus www.example.com) to your Elastic Load Balancing instance or Amazon S3 website bucket using a feature called Alias record.;Simple – With self-service sign-up, Route 53 can start to answer your DNS queries within minutes. You can configure your DNS settings with the AWS Management Console or our easy-to-use API. You can also programmatically integrate the Route 53 API into your overall web application. For instance, you can use Route 53’s API to create a new DNS record whenever you create a new EC2 instance.;Fast – Using a global anycast network of DNS servers around the world, Route 53 is designed to automatically route your users to the optimal location depending on network conditions. As a result, the service offers low query latency for your end users, as well as low update latency for your DNS record management needs.;Cost-Effective – Route 53 passes on the benefits of AWS’s scale to you. You pay only for managing domains through the service and the number of queries that the service answers for each of your domains, at a low cost and without minimum usage commitments or any up-front fees.;Secure – By integrating Route 53 with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), you can grant unique credentials and manage permissions for every user within your AWS account and specify who has access to which parts of the Route 53 service.;Flexible – Route 53 offers Weighted Round-Robin (WRR), also known as DNS load balancing. This lets you assign weights to your DNS records that specify what portion of your traffic is routed to various endpoints.
Reduces Your Bandwidth Costs – If you have bandwidth-heavy workloads that you wish to run in AWS, AWS Direct Connect reduces your network costs into and out of AWS in two ways. First, by transferring data to and from AWS directly, you can reduce your bandwidth commitment to your Internet service provider. Second, all data transferred over your dedicated connection is charged at the reduced AWS Direct Connect data transfer rate rather than Internet data transfer rates.;Consistent Network Performance – Network latency over the Internet can vary given that the Internet is constantly changing how data gets from point A to B. With AWS Direct Connect, you choose the data that utilizes the dedicated connection and how that data is routed which can provide a more consistent network experience over Internet-based connections.;Compatible with all AWS Services – AWS Direct Connect is a network service, and works with all AWS services that are accessible over the Internet, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC).
Statistics
Stacks
14.5K
Stacks
39
Followers
9.4K
Followers
61
Votes
678
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 185
    High-availability
  • 148
    Simple
  • 103
    Backed by amazon
  • 76
    Fast
  • 54
    Auhtoritive dns servers are spread over different tlds
Cons
  • 2
    Geo-based routing only works with AWS zones
  • 2
    SLOW
  • 1
    Restrictive rate limit
No community feedback yet

What are some alternatives to Amazon Route 53, AWS Direct Connect?

DNSimple

DNSimple

DNSimple provides the tools you need to manage your domains. We offer both a carefully crafted web interface for managing your domains and DNS records, as well as an HTTP API with various code libraries and tools. Buy, connect, operate!

Google Cloud DNS

Google Cloud DNS

Use Google's infrastructure for production quality, high volume DNS serving. Your users will have reliable, low-latency access to Google's infrastructure from anywhere in the world using our network of Anycast name servers.

Dyn

Dyn

An all-in-one Managed DNS service for your registered domain names. Dyn DNS is the perfect solution for your domain name’s DNS needs, whether it is for personal or business use. It gives you complete control over your DNS zone and its associated DNS records, complete with a simple DNS management web interface.

DNS Made Easy

DNS Made Easy

DNS Made Easy is a subsidiary of Tiggee LLC, and is a world leader in providing global IP Anycast enterprise DNS services. DNS Made Easy is currently ranked the fastest provider for 8 consecutive months and the most reliable provider.

NS1

NS1

NS1’s intelligent DNS & traffic management platform, with its data driven architecture and unique Filter Chain routing engine, is purpose-built for the most demanding, mission-critical applications on the Internet.

CoreDNS

CoreDNS

CoreDNS is a DNS server. It is written in Go. It can be used in a multitude of environments because of its flexibility

nextdns

nextdns

Cloud-based private DNS service that gives you full control over what is allowed and what is blocked on the Internet. Think of it as a combination of Cloudflare DNS and Pi-hole®.

Modern DDoS Protection & Edge Security Platform

Modern DDoS Protection & Edge Security Platform

Protect and accelerate your apps with Trafficmind’s global edge — DDoS defense, WAF, API security, CDN/DNS, 99.99% uptime and 24/7 expert team.

InboxKit

InboxKit

InboxKit automates your entire cold email infrastructure. Buy domains, provision Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 mailboxes, configure DNS, and export to 16+ sequencers — all from one dashboard. Scale from 10 to 10,000 mailboxes without the manual setup headache.

BIND9

BIND9

It is a versatile name server software. It has evolved to be a very flexible, full-featured DNS system. Whatever your application is, it probably has the required features.

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