Where does outbound traffic exit the Amazon network?

Question

This seems like an obvious and dumb question, but I've searched documentation and forums and can't find it answered with certainty. Basically, how is egress traffic routed by Amazon? If you have an application on an EC2 server that makes an originating, outbound connection to a server on the internet, where does your stream exit the Amazon network? It seems like there's two different possibilities:  
1. it exits from an internet gateway in the region and zone where your server is located and then traverses the public internet OR  
2. it is routed through the Amazon network to the edge location closest to the destination server and exits there.  
Obviously there are advantages to 2. If 2 isn't the default route, is there a service that provides 2? Global Accelerator clearly does this for connections that originate on the internet and come in to the AWS network, but what if the connection originates on your server within the AWS network? It's not clear to me...

Accepted Answer

Hi isumatv,  
  
It's very good question.  
  
Generally AWS tries to keep packet as long as we can with in AWS network and try to exit it closest to destination. But there are circumstances where we need to exit out of AWS network quickly, possible reason could be.  
  
More bandwidth availability on Local Exit ISP/ reduced latency/traffic manipulation during maintenances. But generally we try to keep traffic on AWS internal network (cold potato routing)as we have full visibility of Network path and AWS network is optimised for best performance but its not always the case.  
  
Doing a trace route from your EC2 to your destination will give you some clue.   
  
Regards,  
muhaAtAWS

Where does outbound traffic exit the Amazon network?

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