AWS Mastery for .NET Architects
Lesson 2 of 30 7% of course

VPC Deep Dive: Subnets, Route Tables, and Internet Gateways

17 · 8 min · 5/23/2026

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Your Private Cloud

A VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) is an isolated slice of the AWS network that you control. It's your digital fortress.

1. Public vs Private Subnets

Public Subnets: Have a direct route to the **Internet Gateway (IGW)**. Use these for Load Balancers only.
Private Subnets: No direct internet access. Use these for your .NET APIs and Databases. This is the 'Standard Security' pattern.

2. The NAT Gateway

How does your private .NET API download a NuGet package or call a third-party payment API? It uses a NAT Gateway in the public subnet to send traffic out without allowing the internet to 'see' the API directly.

3. Architect Insight

Q: "How should I design my IP range (CIDR)?"

Architect Answer: "Use a large CIDR block like 10.0.0.0/16. It gives you 65,536 IPs. It costs nothing extra to have a large range, but it is PAINFUL to resize a VPC later. Also, ensure your VPC CIDR doesn't overlap with your office network's CIDR, or you'll never be able to connect them via VPN/DirectConnect."

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AWS Mastery for .NET Architects

On this page

1. Public vs Private Subnets 2. The NAT Gateway 3. Architect Insight
1. AWS Global Infrastructure
AWS Foundations: Regions, Availability Zones, and Edge Locations VPC Deep Dive: Subnets, Route Tables, and Internet Gateways IAM (Identity and Access Management): The Principle of Least Privilege Security Groups vs Network ACLs: Handling traffic for .NET apps
2. Compute for .NET
EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud): Choosing the right instance for C# apps AWS Lambda: Serverless .NET with Native AOT ECS & Fargate: Containerizing .NET APIs at scale Auto Scaling Groups: Handling spikes in traffic
3. Storage & Databases
S3 (Simple Storage Service): Architecting a binary storage layer RDS (Relational Database Service): Managed SQL Server in the cloud DynamoDB Mastery: NoSQL for extreme scale ElastiCache: Boosting performance with Redis/Memcached
4. Networking & Content Delivery
Route 53: DNS management and health checks Application Load Balancer (ALB) vs Network Load Balancer (NLB) CloudFront: Accelerating frontend delivery via CDN API Gateway: Building a unified entry point for Microservices
5. Security & Compliance
AWS WAF: Protecting your APIs from common web attacks AWS Secrets Manager: Managing connection strings securely KMS (Key Management Service): Data encryption for .NET CloudTrail: Auditing your infrastructure changes
6. Messaging & Events
SQS (Simple Queue Service): Decoupling .NET services SNS (Simple Notification Service): Pub/Sub patterns in AWS EventBridge: Building an event-driven bus Step Functions: Orchestrating complex serverless workflows
7. Monitoring & DevOps
CloudWatch: Metrics, Logs, and Alarms for C# apps X-Ray: Distributed tracing for .NET Microservices AWS CodePipeline: CI/CD for .NET on AWS CloudFormation & CDK: Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with C#
8. Optimization & Scale
Cost Optimization (FinOps): Reducing your monthly AWS bill Case Study: Migrating a legacy Monolith to a Cloud-Native AWS stack