Cloud Network Cost Optimization
Data transfer is AWS’s most misunderstood line item. Discover how architectural routing choices, NAT Gateways, and inter-AZ traffic quietly double cloud bills.
NAT Gateway Data Processing
AWS charges both an hourly fee and $0.045 per GB processed. Internal traffic routed through public NATs is an immediate financial drain.
- Deploying VPC Gateway Endpoints for free S3 and DynamoDB traffic
- Consolidating redundant NAT Gateways across non-critical VPCs
- Analyzing VPC Flow Logs to trace top egress talkers
Inter-AZ Cross-Talk
Moving data between Availability Zones in the same AWS region costs $0.01 per GB each way ($0.02 total). High-frequency replication adds up fast.
- Topology-aware routing in Kubernetes (keeping pod traffic in-zone)
- Co-locating chatty microservices within the same Availability Zone
- Kafka and database replication cross-AZ traffic auditing
AWS Data Transfer to Internet
Public outbound internet data fees ($0.09/GB) can be significantly cut through effective edge caching and compression architectures.
- Configuring CloudFront with high cache hit ratios
- Enabling modern Brotli and Gzip compression on edge distributions
- PrivateLink for SaaS integrations instead of public internet transit
Load Balancer Architecture
Application Load Balancers (ALBs) charge per LCU (Load Balancer Capacity Unit) based on new connections, active connections, and processed bytes.
- Consolidating multiple service ALBs into a single shared ingress
- Pruning idle or orphaned load balancers with zero registered targets
- Tuning keep-alive timeouts to minimize synthetic connection spikes
Transit Gateway & Peering
Transit Gateway makes networking simple but introduces an additional $0.02/GB processing fee on top of data transfer.
- Direct VPC Peering for high-bandwidth point-to-point workloads
- Route table optimization to bypass TGW for high-volume data pipelines
- Evaluating centralized egress vs distributed VPC architectures
Cloud Firewall & WAF Costs
Network Firewalls and AWS WAF inspect every byte and request. Misconfigured rule groups generate unexpected multi-thousand-dollar monthly spikes.
- WAF rule group rationalization to avoid redundant rule evaluations
- Restricting rate-limiting rules to public endpoints only
- Tuning Network Firewall inspection policies to avoid internal transit
Have unexplained data transfer charges?
I analyze VPC flow logs and network topology to identify and eliminate expensive routing loops.
Book an Audit Call