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Elastic IP Address:What is an Elastic IP Address?

Last Updated:Jul 31, 2024

An elastic IP address (EIP) is a public IP address that you can purchase and use as an independent resource. You can associate EIPs with Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances in a virtual private cloud (VPC), secondary elastic network interfaces (ENIs), Server Load Balancer (SLB) instances, NAT gateways, and high-availability virtual IP addresses (HAVIPs).

EIPs are used for network address translation (NAT). An EIP resides on a public gateway of Alibaba Cloud and is mapped to a cloud resource through NAT. After EIPs are associated with cloud resources, the cloud resources can use the EIPs to communicate with the Internet.

Features

Feature

Description

References

Apply for an EIP

  • Apply for a new EIP

  • Apply for a released EIP

  • Apply for contiguous EIPs

Apply for an EIP

Associate an EIP with a cloud resource

  • Associate an EIP with an ECS instance in a VPC

  • Associate an EIP with a secondary ENI

  • Associate an EIP with an SLB instance, including:

    • A Classic Load Balancer (CLB) instance in a VPC

    • An Application Load Balancer (ALB) instance (only in the ALB console)

    • A Network Load Balancer (NLB) instance (only in the NLB console)

  • Associate an EIP with a NAT gateway

  • High-availability virtual IP addresses (HAVIPs)

Associate an EIP with an Internet Shared Bandwidth instance

Associate an EIP with an Internet Shared Bandwidth instance to obtain larger bandwidth

Associate an EIP with an Internet Shared Bandwidth instance

Create an IP address pool

An IP address pool contains a range of IP addresses that can be allocated to Elastic IP Addresss. You can create an IP address pool and specify a CIDR block for the IP address pool. When you create EIPs, you can allocate IP addresses from the CIDR block of the IP address pool to the EIPs.

Create and manage IP address pools

EIP monitoring

CloudMonitor can collect EIP metrics in real time and generate time series charts in the EIP console. You can troubleshoot issues based on the monitoring metrics.

Monitoring and alerting

Enable fine-grained monitoring

Fine-grained monitoring monitors traffic fluctuations in real time. You can adjust the maximum bandwidth of EIPs as needed.

Configure fine-grained monitoring

Manage idle EIPs

Idle EIPs are displayed in the EIP console. You can manage idle EIPs to reduce costs.

Manage idle EIPs

View operation records

Access to EIPs and user behaviors can be recorded. You can troubleshoot errors based on operation records.

View operation records

Troubleshooting

You can troubleshoot EIP issues such as access failures and access exceptions, and issues related to quotas and fees.

Troubleshooting

Line types

EIP supports the line types of BGP (Multi-ISP) and BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro. The following table describes the differences between BGP (Multi-ISP) and BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro.

Item

BGP (Multi-ISP)

BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro

Benefits

BGP (Multi-ISP) provides high-quality and high-bandwidth BGP lines.

  • Provides high-quality BGP lines across the globe.

  • BGP lines from different ISPs are used at the same time and the optimal BGP line is automatically selected to ensure network stability.

    Supported ISPs are China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, China Netcom, CERNET, NRTA, Dr. Peng Group, and Founder Broadband.

  • You can use BGP (Multi-ISP) with Internet Shared Bandwidth to obtain bandwidth of 100 Gbit/s and higher.

BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro lines optimize data transmission to mainland China and improve connection quality for international services. Unlike BGP (Multi-ISP), when BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro lines provide services to users in the Chinese mainland (excluding data centers), cross-border connections are established by using Chinese mainland ISP services. This reduces network latency.

Supported regions

All regions

China (Hong Kong), Japan (Tokyo), Singapore, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Philippines (Manila), Indonesia (Jakarta), and Thailand (Bangkok)

Note

BGP (Multi-ISP) Pro lines support only the pay-as-you-go billing method in the following regions: Japan (Tokyo), Singapore, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), Philippines (Manila), Indonesia (Jakarta), and Thailand (Bangkok).

Differences between EIPs and ECS static public IP addresses

The following table describes the differences between EIPs and ECS static public IP addresses.

Item

EIP

ECS static public IP address

Supported networks

VPC

VPC and classic network

Use as an independent resource

Supported

Unsupported

Associate with and disassociate from an ECS instance at any time

Supported

Unsupported

Benefits

EIPs provide the following benefits:

  • Independent purchase and use

    An EIP can be an independent resource within your Alibaba Cloud account. You do not need to purchase EIPs with other computing resources or storage resources.

  • Flexible association and disassociation

    You can associate EIPs with resources and disassociate EIPs from resources anytime. This helps you reduce costs.

  • Flexible bandwidth adjustment

    You can adjust the maximum bandwidth of an EIP based on business requirements. Bandwidth modifications immediately take effect.

  • Flexible billing and low costs

    Multiple billing methods are supported, including subscription and pay-as-you-go (pay-by-bandwidth and pay-by-data-transfer). You can reduce bandwidth costs by associating an EIP with an Internet Shared Bandwidth instance.

Scenarios

Work with EIPs

The following methods show how to manage EIPs, for example, how to create an EIP and associate it with a resource:

  • EIP console: a web interface that supports interactive operations. For more information, see Quick start.

  • EIP API: You can call the EIP API operations to perform the operations that are supported by the EIP console. For more information about the EIP API operations, see List of operations by function.

Related services

Resources that can be associated with EIPs

EIPs can be associated with different cloud resources to meet different requirements.

  • Elastic Compute Service: a cloud computing service that supports elastic and efficient computing in the cloud. For more information, see What is ECS?

  • ENI: a virtual network interface that can be associated with ECS instances. You can use ENIs to deploy high-availability clusters and perform low-cost failover and fine-grained network management. For more information, see ENI overview.

  • CLB: forwards traffic to backend servers based on forwarding policies. For more information, see What is CLB?

  • ALB: provides load balancing for application layer scenarios, such as HTTP, HTTPs, and QUIC services. For more information, see What is ALB?

  • NLB: provides next-generation Layer 4 load balancing for Internet of Everything (IoE) services. For more information, see What is NLB?

  • NAT Gateway: a network address translation service that supports source network address translation (SNAT) and destination network address translation (DNAT). For more information, see What is NAT Gateway?

  • HAVIP: a private IP address that you can create and release as an independent resource. You can combine HAVIPs with software that supports high availability, such as Keepalived, to improve your service availability. For more information, see HAVIP.

Other Internet access services provided by Alibaba Cloud

You can also use the following services to reduce costs for Internet connections or improve Internet connection quality.