NAT Gateway ¶
- A NAT gateway is a
Network Address Translation (NAT)service. - You can use a NAT gateway so that instances in a
private subnetcan connect to services outside your VPC but external services cannot initiate a connection with those instances.
Gateway and router difference
A gateway connects networks, and a router delivers data within a network. Gateways and routers are usually separate devices. However, it's becoming more common for their functions to be combined in a router. For example, in your home network, your router can also be your default gateway.
NAT Gateway is a highly available AWS managed service that makes it easy to connect to the Internet from instances within a private subnet in an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). Previously, you needed to launch a NAT instance to enable NAT for instances in a private subnet.
Remember
A NAT gateway is preferable to a NAT instance because it is managed by AWS rather than you, the architect.