AWS Elastic IP Addresses

Pre-requisite: AWS

A Static IPv4 address more suited for dynamic cloud computing is called an Elastic IP (EIP) address. These IPs are mostly used to hide instances or software from your AWS account that fail. The address is mapped to another instance that is as soon as feasible made available in your account in order to accomplish this. Your AWS account receives an IP address automatically, and until you choose to surrender it, it is yours. As an alternative, you can add the IP to a DNS record for your domain. Making sure the supplied domain points to your instance using this will do that.

The internet can be used to access this address just like any other public IPv4 address. If your instance lacks a public IPv4 address that allows communication from the internet to the instance, you can associate this IP address with it. The AWS EIP does not currently support IPv6 addresses.

Elastic Pricing for IP Addresses

In order to ensure that the offered IP addresses are utilized effectively, AWS imposes a small, hourly fee. A business must meet a few requirements in order to obtain the price charges. These are what they are:

• If you want to give the same instance various IP addresses
• If the IP-based instances are terminated or stopped
• If the network interface is not connected to the IP address
• If over the course of a month, the IPs were remapped more than 100 times,

Elastic IP addresses are weirdly priced by Amazon: There is no cost associated with utilizing them; they are totally free. For unused Elastic IP addresses, on the other hand, which are addresses that aren’t actively assigned to running instances, Amazon charges $.005 per hour. Because Elastic IP addresses are scarce resources, this method encourages users to use them when they request them. Request only as many Elastic IP addresses as you require, and release any extras back to AWS if not needed.

Elastic IP Addresses and the AWS Network’s Reach

• AWS network scope basically complies with AWS’s geographical boundaries. The public IP addresses allocated to your instance vary by area, but they are universal in nature, which means that, like all public IP addresses, they are all distinct and may be accessed by anybody worldwide. 
• For instance, if you start an instance in the AWS US East region, it will have a public IP address that comes from one of the IP address ranges that Amazon keeps for US East. With that public IP address, your instance is accessible to all resources in the world (including those in AWS).
• Region-scoped IP addresses are also available. Five Elastic IP addresses are the maximum you can have per area by default, and they are all contained within the region-specific address ranges.
• Region-scoped IP addresses also apply to private ones. Using the private IP address assigned to the instances, instances inside any availability zone in a given region can connect with one another without being charged for network traffic.

Working of AWS Elastic IP

The working of AWS Elastic IP can be explained in the following manner:

1. Allocate an Elastic IP Address: It is easy to assign an IP address to your account. Your IP address may be assigned using either the pool of IP addresses offered by Amazon or the private IP address pool you have added to your account.

There are the following options for the Public IPv4 address pool:

• IPv4 Addresses are available on Amazon: If you want an IPv4 address assigned from the pool of IPv4 numbers maintained by Amazon.
• My Collection of Open IPv4 Addresses: If you wish to assign an IPv4 address from a pool of IP addresses you’ve added to your AWS account. If your network does not contain any IP address pools, this option is disabled.
• The IPv4 Address Pool that belongs to the Customer: If you need to distribute an IPv4 address for use with AWS Outposts from a pool made using your on-premises network. If you don’t have AWS Outposts, this option isn’t available to you.

2. Describe your Elastic IP Address: In this step, one can view all the metadata of the Elastic IP Address by visiting the View Information Portal. Here the metadata includes the name, descriptions, port numbers assigned, and other necessary details.

3. Tag an Elastic IP Address: You can use tags to distinguish between your IP addresses in case you have created multiple IP addresses. 

4. Connect or Disconnect an Elastic IP address from a Network Interface or Instance

5. Release an Elastic IP Address: We advise releasing an Elastic IP address via one of the following procedures if you no longer require it. The IP that needs to be released cannot currently be connected to any EC2 instance, NAT gateway, or Network Load Balancer on AWS.

Features of AWS Elastic IP

• These IP addresses are static, as was already mentioned, thus they won’t change over time.
• The principal network interface of the instance for which the IP address is attached is likewise connected to these IPs. As a result, when you link an instance’s network interface to it, the other way around, the instance is also linked to it.
• If you link an elastic IP to an instance, the instance’s public IPv4 address will also be made available to other instances in the Amazon public IPv4 address pool.
• The issue with public IPv4 addresses is that they cannot be recycled and cannot be changed to an elastic IP address. Here, you will be able to reassociate them to a different instance and detach them from one. Your connections to the newly connected resource can be resumed. Unless you consciously choose to release it, your account will continue to be assigned the disassociated IP address.
• If you associate an instance with an elastic IP address even if it has a public IPv4 address, the instance’s public DNS hostname will be updated to reflect the elastic IP address.
• Either the custom IP pool you added to your AWS account or the pool of IPv4 addresses provided by AWS will provide the Elastic IP address. The used IP address will not be taken into account for elastic IP address limits if it comes from your own IP pool.
• When an IP address is assigned, the network border group may be linked to it. If a network border group is supplied, AWS will automatically set it to one of the region’s available zones. An Elastic IP cannot be moved across regions because it is intended for use in a specific network border group and region.
• Elastic IP addresses can be used with any EC2 instance, as long as it’s running in a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud). They can also be used with Amazon’s other services, such as Amazon Elastic Load Balancer, AWS CloudFront, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk.
• Elastic IP addresses can be reserved and owned by your AWS account, which allows you to retain the same IP address even if you stop or terminate an instance. This is useful if you need to ensure that clients or customers always connect to the same IP address.
• AWS provides a number of tools to help you manage your Elastic IP addresses, including the ability to view usage reports, monitor IP address changes, and automate IP address allocation and release.
• Elastic IP addresses are free to use as long as they are attached to a running instance. However, if they are not associated with an instance, you will be charged a small hourly fee.
• If you need to assign multiple IP addresses to an instance, you can use the AWS Network Interface (ENI) feature to create additional virtual network interfaces and associate each one with a different IP address.
• Elastic IP addresses can be used to create highly available and fault-tolerant systems by allowing you to quickly and easily switch IP addresses between instances. This can be useful in situations where you need to perform maintenance on an instance or if an instance fails and needs to be replaced.
• If you need to move an Elastic IP address to a different AWS account or region, you can use the AWS Elastic IP Address Transfer feature. This allows you to transfer ownership of the IP address to another account or region without disrupting your existing services.

Limitation of Elastic IP

Elastic IP is easy to use, but it has several drawbacks.

• Public IPv4 addresses are a limited resource on the internet.
• AWS sets a default restriction of five Elastic IP addresses per region.
• AWS advises utilizing IP addresses for that and other intra-node communication because the major function of these IP addresses is to conceal the failure instances by remapping the addresses to new instances.
• AWS charges an hourly fee for Elastic IP addresses that are not associated with a running instance. This can make it expensive to reserve IP addresses that are not being actively used.
• The number of Elastic IP addresses that you can allocate per account is limited by default. AWS imposes a soft limit of 5 Elastic IP addresses per region for each account. If you need more than this, you will need to request a higher limit from AWS support.
• Public IPv4 addresses are a limited resource on the internet, and there is a finite number of them available. This means that it’s important to use Elastic IP addresses judiciously and only allocate them when they are truly needed.
• Elastic IP addresses can only be used in the same AWS region where they were allocated. This means that if you need to move an instance to a different region, you will need to release the existing Elastic IP address and allocate a new one in the new region.
• It’s important to properly manage your Elastic IP addresses to avoid wasting resources and incurring unnecessary costs. This includes releasing unused IP addresses, avoiding over-provisioning, and monitoring usage to ensure that IP addresses are being used effectively.

Conclusion

I hope this blog has helped you better understand AWS Elastic IPs. In the near future, there will be many job openings worldwide in the field of cloud computing. Therefore, it is up to you to seize the chance, gain expertise in the cloud, and make more than you would in other IT positions.