A private, physical network link between your premises and a cloud provider — completely separate from the public internet. Like having your own private highway instead of sharing public roads.
AWS Direct Connect and Azure ExpressRoute are dedicated connections that give enterprises consistent, low-latency network performance for moving large amounts of data to and from the cloud.
All four services provide private, dedicated connectivity from on-premises or colocation facilities to the provider’s network, avoiding the public internet for more predictable latency, throughput, and reliability. Differences are mainly in port speeds, partner ecosystems, routing options (BGP), and where you can physically connect (provider/partner locations).