Amazon VPC

IPv6

Bringing scale to your applications with IPv6

Why IPv6?

IPv6 usage is growing every year and becoming the default in many new network configurations. Being an IPv6 leader gives you experience to manage and deliver applications on modern networks. AWS allows you to design and deploy a global environment that leverages end-to-end IPv6 connectivity. You can host applications in dual stack and IPv6-only virtual networking environments and provide connectivity over IPv6 across Amazon VPCs and to and from the internet. We have supported IPv6 on AWS since 2011, and as of 2021 have IPv6-only capabilities like IPv6-only subnets and EC2 instances, NAT gateways that support IPv6 to IPv4 translation, Elastic Load Balancers with IPv6 targets, Amazon EKS IPv6 support and more. These features allow you to deliver business outcomes by building highly scalable architectures on IPv6 while maintaining backwards compatibility with your existing IPv4 workloads.

Benefits

Simplified architecture and reduced cost

IPv6 on AWS simplifies web architecture by minimizing the need for translation mechanisms. It also eliminates the need for complex architectures built using Private IPv4 addresses to work around constrained Public IPv4 addresses.

Scale beyond the limitation of IPv4 space

Scaling your application on AWS is no longer constrained by the number of IPv4 addresses in your VPC. By using IPv6, you can assign easy to manage contiguous IP ranges to micro-services and can get virtually unlimited scale for your applications in your VPCs.

Expand your global reachability

There is a surge in devices that connect to the internet, and an increasing number of them use IPv6 addresses. By making your applications on AWS IPv6 compatible, you are now able to do end to end native IPv6.

Use cases

Large scale microservices deployments

IPv6 makes it easy to scale containerized applications in your subnets by providing a significantly larger total IP address space, and allowing you to focus on migrating and scaling applications without devoting effort towards overcoming IPv4 limits.

Enterprises with global footprint

IPv6 network connectivity between your branch offices, data centers, and Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) can help you manage IPv4 exhaustion, easily integrate acquisitions, and simplify architectures.

Build differentiated consumer products

IPv6 allows you to build a scalable network of connected consumer applications that can seamlessly connect with each other and improve the devices security posture, by eliminating the need for address translations.