18

With Amazon's EC2, to assign an IP address I create an "Elastic IP", however it seems to just give me a static IP address. What is the difference between a static IP and an elastic IP? Or is it the same and just part of AWS's branding?

2
  • Is it really static and not someone that you assign dynamically in the UI? Clouds are not always as static as servers - so they may refer to the fact that you can ask for htem and release them in a moments notice.
    – TomTom
    May 20, 2012 at 19:13
  • Elastic IP Adresses docs
    – Palec
    Sep 3, 2015 at 14:04

1 Answer 1

22

Amazon Guides are always a good reference to understand better the entire infraestructure. In Amazon EC2 Elastic IP Addresses you can read:

Elastic IP addresses are static IP addresses designed for dynamic cloud computing. Unlike traditional static IP addresses, however, Elastic IP addresses allow you to mask instance or availability zone failures by programmatically remapping your public IP addresses to any instance associated with your account. Rather than waiting on a data technician to reconfigure or replace your host, or waiting for DNS to propagate to all of your customers, Amazon EC2 enables you to engineer around problems with your instance or software by programmatically remapping your Elastic IP address to a replacement instance.

2
  • 1
    Why do they call it "elastic"? Mar 18, 2015 at 3:39
  • 1
    @CMCDragonkai Wikipedia says: >A user can create, launch, and terminate server-instances as needed, paying by the second for active servers – hence the term "elastic" So the dynamics payment is the reason.
    – Carolus
    Jun 7, 2019 at 10:33

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .