Understanding EC2 networking

Before we understand how EC2 networking actually works, it is essential to understand the difference between networks provided by your traditional data centres and public clouds such as AWS. A traditional data centre network generally comprises a number of physical switches and routers that are connected to physical hardware and are responsible for transmitting and forwarding data or packets from one place to another.

The same also applies in the case of cloud computing; however, in place of the hardware, you now have virtual devices such as virtual servers, virtual network cards, virtual switches, and routers. However, the main differentiator between traditional and cloud based networks is that a cloud-based network is heavily filtered. Most public cloud providers, including AWS itself, allow only unicast datagrams over their networks, restricting all broadcast datagrams. Why, you ask? Well, mostly for security purposes and to avoid DDoS attacks, besides other...