Partners using Amazon Web Services in Toronto are in luck, as the tech company has launched an AWS Direct Connect location in the Canadian city that will support the Canada Central AWS region.
A direct connection will eliminate the need for those in Toronto to rely on the public internet to send data back and forth from your cloud provider. Users can establish a private connection between AWS and their own data centre, office, or colocation environment.
Each connection is made to a particular Direct Connect location, and it can run at either 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps. You can also work with a partner to connect at speeds less than 1 G. Once the connection established, users can create “virtual interfaces directly to public AWS services (i.e. Amazon S3) or to Amazon VPC, bypassing Internet service providers in their network path”.
According to an AWS blog post announcing the news, a direct connection can “reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than Internet-based connections”.
Companies can set up a single connection to any AWS Direct Connect location in North America, and use it to then access public AWS services in any North American region and AWS GovCloud.
The Toronto AWS Direct Connect facility is located at 250 Front St. W, Toronto. The company also announced two other Direct Connect locations in Atlanta, GA and  Columbus, OH.
Instructions for how to get connected with AWS Direct Connect is available here.
Earlier this spring, AWS gave developers several new good reasons to build in the cloud, offering access to integration with the same AI that powers its popular Alexa assistant, faster databases, and the capability to run analytics queries across exabytes of data. The company is also looking for Canadian applications for its Cloud Innovation Challenge.
