Find yourself sitting in rush-hour traffic watching folks in the carpool lane whiz by? While it is often tempting to 'cheat,' it is against the law and you can end up with a rather expensive ticket. Alternatively, you could buy yourself a low emissions vehicle, and with an approved 'clean air vehicle sticker' plastered to your rear bumper,  drive in the carpool lane all day long. If you are lucky enough to live in an area of California where there are Express or 'Hot Lanes' then solo drivers are allowed to drive in the carpool lane during peak hours if they pay a fee.

Enterprises moving traffic across the internet to the public cloud may find themselves in need of an 'express lane' with the increasing number of applications being hosted in the public cloud. In fact the 2014 Cisco Global Cloud Index states that Global Cloud Traffic will triple by 2018. What does this mean for Enterprises?

Today Enterprises are using their internet connections to connect to public cloud providers. However, as more business critical data and applications are hosted in the cloud this traffic will be competing with non-business critical internet traffic, making security and performance of WAN connections a top priority.

There are a number of ways that Enterprises can solve this problem.  One of them, CSR over Direct Connect, is being announced at AWS re:Invent at Las Vegas this week. I am pleased to announce that Cisco, AWS, and Level 3 Communications are partnering to deliver enterprise-grade connectivity to AWS Cloud.  CSR over Direct Connect enables enterprises to extend their security policies into the AWS cloud at multi-gig speeds using Cisco's CSR 1000V and Level 3 Cloud Connect Solutions. How does it work? There are 3 pieces to this solution:

1. AWS Direct Connectmakes it easy to establish a dedicated network connection from your private enterprise network to AWS. Using AWS Direct Connect, you can establish private connectivity between AWS and your datacenter, office, or colocation environment, which in many cases can reduce your network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than Internet-based connections.
2. Level 3 Cloud Connect Solutionsprovides dedicated connectivity to Amazon Web Services (AWS). As part of the AWS Partner Network (APN) that supports AWS Direct Connect, Level 3 provides network connections to improve enterprise access to AWS's cloud computing platform and services.
3. Cisco Cloud Services Router 1000Vis a multi-service virtual router that enables Enterprises to securely connect from their private network to their AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) instance. Using enterprise class VPN technology, the CSR 1000V can encrypt workloads at multi-gigabits speeds.  The new CSR Direct Connect 1G and Multi-Gig AMIs allow for one-click deployment of CSR over Direct Connect.

If you are an existing Cisco ISR or ASR series router customer it is easy to establish a VPN tunnel between the ISR/ASR and the CSR 1000V to encrypt all traffic traversing the AWS Direct Connect circuit.  Once in place, the CSR 1000V may also be configured for any other desired network services.

To download the CSR 1000V for Direct Connect and get started today, please visit the CSR Direct Connect product page in the AWS Marketplace and take advantage of our 30-day free trial. Not convinced this is the solution for you? View this short video from our partner Level 3 Communications:

 https://youtu.be/oOHydRiD9OU