AWS Direct Connect now lets you see your BGP routes right in the console!

Hi, it's Shii! Today I found an update from AWS What's New that should make life easier for anyone connecting on-premises networks to AWS, network troubleshooting just got a bit less painful!

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

According to AWS What's New, AWS Direct Connect now supports BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) route visibility. Across private, transit, and public virtual interfaces (VIFs), you can now see the routes exchanged between AWS and your on-premises routers.

The story so far

You could already run BGP sessions and route traffic through Direct Connect, but there wasn't much of a way to actually check which routes were being exchanged. There was no direct way to see which routes AWS accepted or which ones it was advertising, so diagnosing routing problems often meant relying on guesswork.

What changes

Now you can see both the routes AWS accepted from your router (accepted routes) and the routes AWS is advertising to your router (advertised routes), including AS path and BGP community values. Network administrators should find it much easier to troubleshoot routing issues, verify that routes are propagating correctly, and monitor hybrid connectivity.

Dive Deep

A closer look at how it works:

• You can view route data in the Direct Connect console, or programmatically via the ListVirtualInterfaceRoutes API action
• Each route shows its prefix, address family, AS path, community values, and installation timestamp
• You can filter routes by prefix, AS path, community, or address family
• AWS positions this as useful for validating complex multi-region architectures, checking BGP policy behavior, and diagnosing unexpected traffic patterns
• It's available in all AWS commercial Regions plus the AWS China Regions (Beijing, operated by Sinnet, and Ningxia, operated by NWCD)

Wrap-up

• Direct Connect VIFs now support BGP route visibility
• You can see both accepted and advertised routes, with AS path and community values
• Available via the ListVirtualInterfaceRoutes API and the console, with filtering support
• Available in all commercial Regions plus select China Regions

If you manage networking between on-premises infrastructure and AWS over Direct Connect, this should make chasing down routing issues a lot easier, worth checking out!