Please Give Me Back My Network Cables! On Networking Limits in AWS
summary
AWS EC2 enforces both bandwidth and packets‑per‑second caps so a “15 Gbps” instance is also limited to 1.25M packets/sec, meaning small IoT packets (150–200 bytes) can reduce observed throughput to about 750 Mbps bidirectional. ENA exposes these counters via ENA ethtool counters (CloudWatch won’t show them by default; node_exporter or the CloudWatch agent must read ethtool). Fragmented packets hit CPU paths unless enable fragment bypass or jumbo frames are used. Connection tracking is limited per instance but can be disabled with all‑IP allow rules.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00AWS networking limits
- 3:50AWS limits for IoT
- 8:08EC2 network bandwidth limits
- 13:51Microbursts and counters
- 17:22Fragmented packets and performance
- 22:38Connection tracking limits
- 27:16Monitoring connection tracking
- 31:12Disabling connection tracking
- 34:44AWS networking lessons
- 35:46Resources and closing
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