Peter DeSantis, vice president of infrastructure at Amazon Web Services, unveils new cloud networking technologies at re:Invent 2018. (GeekWire Photo / Tom Krazit)

LAS VEGAS – Amazon Web Services has built a state-of-the-art network around the world in order to serve its cloud customers, and it rolled out a few new features based around that network in kicking off its AWS re:Invent 2018 conference.

AWS vice president of infrastructure Peter DeSantis introduced AWS Global Accelerator and AWS Transit Gateway Monday night after showing off the reach of its network, which includes not only its cloud computing regions and availability zones but its Amazon CloudFront content-delivery network and its Direct Connect points-of-presence for customers running hybrid-cloud setups. The new networking services are designed for cloud customers who are serving customers in multiple regions around the world and want to take advantage of the closest AWS data center and the private AWS network.

Global Accelerator lets AWS customers direct their own customers “to your workload based on their geographic location, application health, and weights that you can configure,” the company said in a blog post. The idea is to meet your customers where they are using the closest AWS entry point to the public internet, rather than forcing their traffic to travel over the public internet to the AWS regions you’re using, which should improve performance.

The company also announced AWS Transit Gateway, which helps customers running virtual private clouds for security reasons connect those VPCs in a more structured fashion. This will make it easier to manage VPCs and should make these connections easier to secure, the company said in a blog post.

Wrapping up the networking related portion of the evening, AWS rolled out new C5 cloud instances that can handle networking speeds up to 100Gbps. This is way more than most applications need but bandwidth-intensive applications need every bit they can get, and Chris Dyl, director of platform at Epic Games, took the stage to explaine how Fortnite will be able to take advantage of these new capabilities.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.