It is possible to associate Amazon
Web Service instances with some different forms of IP addresses: private, elastic
or public. There are generally two Internet Protocol versions: version 4 and 6.
AWS IPv6 and IPv4addresses can be of the private and public types. Amazon Web Services
does not yet support the elastic addresses for Internet Protocol version 6. Read
on to know more regarding these three forms of Internet Protocol addresses that
AWS provides.
Public IP
Address
Communication
beyond the network happens through this IP address. It is useable to
communicate between virtual machines in AWS and the internet. The best
potential use scenario for these is as part of small projects in which dynamic IP
is useable without much overhead. Amazon Web Services has more than one million
public-type IP addresses, plus it continues to add fresh ones.
These are
similar to the elastic addresses in that both are public and enable
communication between AWS instances and the internet. Anyhow, the addresses
differ in how these are connected to AWS’s EC2 instances.
The addresses
are allotted to the instances through Amazon’s public IPv4 address pool when
these machines are started. The addresses stay allotted to each AWS virtual
machine up to the time the VM is stopped. In the event of the machine being
stopped and then started later, a fresh IP address would be allotted to it.
Private IP
Address
It is
utilized to communicate within your local network, so it cannot be reached
through the internet as in the case of the public address. It is useable to
communicate from one virtual machine in AWS’s VPC environment to another
instance. It stays associated with AWS’s instance at the time of the machine being
stopped or restarted. It would only dissociate from the instance if that VM is terminated.
An AWS
virtual machine being launched enables you to allot the address to it. If you
do not perform the above, EC2 would assign it to the machine within the range
of addresses in the VPC. When you do not stipulate a private IP address from
Amazon Web Services, it would choose one that is available in that range. It is
also possible to allot a secondary IP address.
Elastic IP
Address
It is a
static IP address made to facilitate dynamic cloud computing. It is allotted to
one’s Amazon Web Services account instead of a specific virtual machine. Associating
it with your AWS instance will keep it allotted to the account and this virtual
machine until its dissociation from either happens.
Helping with
AWS’s fault-tolerant virtual machines or software, is the most common use of
this IP address. For instance, in the event of your EC2 instance with the address
becoming stopped/terminated, you could remap and reconnect it to a different VM
in your AWS account. You could also reconnect the same address to that instance
after it is rebooted.