You can connect different virtual private clouds (VPCs) by using Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) and VPN gateways.

CEN

CEN allows you to establish private connections between VPCs. CEN facilitates network convergence and improves the quality and security of communication through automatic route advertising and learning. For more information, see Cloud Enterprise Network.

You can use CEN to connect VPCs that belong to the same Alibaba Cloud account or different Alibaba Cloud accounts. The following table describes the scenarios.
Scenario References
Connect VPCs that belong to the same Alibaba Cloud account Use Enterprise Edition transit routers to enable intra-region communication between on-premises and cloud networks
Connect VPCs that belong to different Alibaba Cloud accounts Use Enterprise Edition transit routers to connect VPCs across regions and accounts
CEN has the following benefits:
  • Network connections in different regions

    CEN allows cloud resources that are deployed in different regions around the world to communicate with each other. CEN ensures that the IP addresses are unique and do not conflict with each other. In addition, CEN automatically advertises and learns routes to accelerate route convergence.

  • Low latency and high speed

    CEN provides low-latency and high-speed network transmission. CEN ensures that on-premises networks communicate with each other at the highest data transfer rate supported by the device ports. CEN provides network connections with lower latency than Internet connections.

  • Nearest access and shortest path transmission

    CEN has access points and nodes deployed on a global scale to support nearest access to Alibaba Cloud. Compared with communication over the Internet, CEN connections provide lower network latency.

  • Standby connections and disaster recovery

    CEN provides at least four standby connections between two nodes. Therefore, CEN ensures high availability for your services. If some connections fail to work, the standby connections take over. This way, CEN ensures that your service is not interrupted and prevents network jitter.

  • Systematic management

    CEN can monitor networks in a systematic manner and automatically detects route conflicts that are caused by system changes. This ensures the stability of your services.

VPN Gateway

VPN Gateway is an Internet-based networking service that supports route-based IPsec-VPN connections. You can connect VPCs by establishing secure and reliable IPsec-VPN connections. For more information, see Establish IPsec-VPN connections between two VPCs.

VPN Gateway has the following benefits:
  • Security

    VPN Gateway uses the IKE and IPsec protocols in data transmission to ensure data security.

  • High Availability

    The active-active architecture enables VPN Gateway to perform failovers within seconds. This ensures that your service and session are not interrupted when errors occur.

  • Cost-effectiveness

    The encrypted Internet-based connections provided by VPN Gateway are more cost-effective than Express Connect circuits.

  • Simple configurations

    VPN Gateway is an out-of-the-box service and configurations immediately take effect.