AWS Fundamentals #2: Stop Paying NAT Gateway Tax (Use VPC Endpoints)

✅ Project Repo: https://github.com/robertdippolito/nat-gateway-vs-vpc-endpoint-experiment

NAT Gateways are great for general internet egress — but if most of your egress is AWS services like S3, you may be paying a big NAT data-processing bill for no reason.

In AWS Fundamentals #2, I run a controlled experiment to show exactly what happens when you route S3 traffic through a NAT Gateway vs an S3 Gateway VPC Endpoint. You’ll see real numbers (NAT bytes + latency) and when it’s worth swapping NAT traffic for endpoints to cut cost and tighten performance.

What you’ll learn

When NAT Gateways are the right tool (and when they’re overkill)
Gateway vs Interface endpoints (simple explanation)
The exact test setup: private EC2 → S3 workload (PUT/GET)
Results: NAT data processed + what that means for cost
Results: latency comparison (NAT vs VPCE)
Practical guidance: when you can reduce/remove NAT and use endpoints instead

Key takeaway
If your “egress” is mostly AWS services (like S3), VPC endpoints can eliminate NAT data processing costs for that traffic — and often give more consistent performance.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:20 NAT Gateways vs VPC Endpoints (quick fundamentals)
01:03 Architecture + routing (NAT path vs VPCE path)
02:21 Experiment #1 — NAT baseline run
07:26 Experiment #2 — S3 Gateway Endpoint run
09:58 Results: NAT bytes + cost impact

💬 Question: Where do you still rely on NAT today ?

#AWS #AWSFundamentals #VPC #VPCEndpoints #NATGateway #S3 #CloudNetworking #CloudCostOptimization #DevOps #PlatformEngineering

Видео AWS Fundamentals #2: Stop Paying NAT Gateway Tax (Use VPC Endpoints) канала RobOps