Data Transfer and Networking Cost Optimization

Networking can be 20%+ of AWS bills. FCAI highlights costly paths and suggests cheaper patterns.

Principles

• Minimize cross-AZ and inter-region traffic; collocate producers/consumers.
• Prefer PrivateLink/VPC endpoints to avoid NAT data charges.
• Cache with CloudFront; compress and set long TTLs.

Common savings

• Move inter-service traffic inside the same AZ where feasible.
• Use S3 Transfer Acceleration or Multi-Region Access Points for global uploads.
• Replace NAT-heavy patterns with egress via ALB/CloudFront or interface endpoints.

Observability

• Track detailed billing for DataTransfer-*, NAT, CloudFront egress.
• FCAI shows top talkers by service, AZ, and direction.