Difference between NAT Gateway and NAT Instance
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In this read, we will take a good look at some of the differences between NAT Gateway and NAT Instance in AWS. Let’s get started.
| Attribute | NAT Gateway | NAT Instance |
|---|---|---|
| Availability | Highly available and is implemented in each availability zone with redundancy | Uses a script to manage the failover between instances |
| Bandwidth | Can scale up to 45 Gbps and can support up to 5500 simultaneous connections to each unique destination | Depends on the bandwidth of the instance type |
| Maintainence | Managed by AWS | Managed by cloud user |
| Cost | Charged depending on the number of NAT gateways, duration of usage, and the amount of data sent through the NAT gateway | Charged depending on the number of NAT instances that we use, duration of usage, and the instance type and size |
| Type & Size | Uniform offering | Choose a suitable instance type and size according to the predicted workload |
| Public IP addresses | Choose an Elastic IP (EIP) address to associate with a NAT gateway at the time of creation | Use an Elastic IP address or the public IP address with a NAT instance. We can change the public IP address at any time by associating a new elastic IP address with the instance |
| Private IP addresses | Automatically selected from the subnet’s IP address range when we create the gateway | Assign a specific private IP address from the subnet IP address range when we launch an instance |
| Security group (SG) | Not associated with any security group | Associated with security group to control the inbound and outbound traffic |
| Network access control list (NACL) | Use the network ACL to control traffic to and from the subnet in which NAT gateway resides | Use the network ACL to control traffic to and from the subnet in which NAT instance resides |
| Bastion servers | Not supported | Supported |
| Traffic metrics | Cloudwatch | Cloudwatch |
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