New AWS Wavelength Zone in Toronto – The First in Canada

Wireless communication has put us closer to each other. 5G networks increase the reach of what we can achieve to new use cases that need end-to-end low latency. With AWS Wavelength, you can deploy AWS compute and storage services within telecommunications providers’ data centers at the edge of the 5G networks. Your applications can then deliver single-digit millisecond latencies to mobile devices and end users and, at the same time, seamlessly access AWS services in the closest AWS Region.

For example, low latency enables new use cases such as:

• Delivery of high-resolution and high-fidelity live video streaming.
• Improved experience for augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) applications.
• Running machine learning (ML) inference at the edge for applications in medical diagnostics, retail, and factories.
• Connected vehicle applications with near real-time connectivity with the cloud to improve driver assistance, autonomous driving, and in-vehicle entertainment experiences.

We opened the first AWS Wavelength Zones in 2020 in the US, and then we expanded to new countries, such as Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Today, I am happy to share that, in partnership with Bell Canada, we are expanding in a new country with a Wavelength Zone in Toronto.

What You Can Do with AWS Wavelength
As an example of what is possible with Wavelength, let’s look at food deliveries in Toronto. Most deliveries are made within 2 km, and a significant number are for just one item, such as a cup of coffee. Using a car for these deliveries is slow, expensive, and has a large carbon footprint. A better solution is provided by Tiny Mile: they use small remote-controlled robots to deliver small food orders such as coffees and sandwiches at one-tenth the cost of conventional delivery services.

Their remote staff uses the camera feed from the robots to understand the environment, read signage, and drive the robots. To scale up more efficiently, Tiny Mile can now use Bell’s public Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) solution, delivered through AWS Wavelength, to process data and analyze the video feed in almost real time to detect obstacles and avoid collisions without manual intervention. Having computation at the edge also reduces the weight and the costs of the robots (they don’t need expensive computers onboard) and increases the amount of cargo they can carry.

Using a Wavelength Zone
I follow the instructions in Get started with AWS Wavelength in the documentation. First, I opt in to use the new Wavelength Zone. In the EC2 console for the Canada (Central) Region, I enable New EC2 Experience in the upper-left corner. In the navigation pane, I choose EC2 Dashboard. In the Account attributes section, I choose Zones. There, I enable the Canada (BELL) Wavelength Zone.

Now, I can configure networking to use the Wavelength Zone. I can either create an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) or extend an existing VPC to include a subnet in a Wavelength Zone. In this case, I want to use a new VPC. In the VPC console, I choose Your VPCs and then Create VPC. I select the VPC only option to create subnets later. I write a name for the VPC and choose the IPv4 CIDR block that will be used for the private addresses of the resources in this VPC. Then, I complete the creation of the VPC.

In the navigation pane, I choose Carrier Gateways and then Create carrier gateway. I write a name and select the VPC I just created. I enable Route subnet traffic to the carrier gateway to automatically route traffic from subnets to the carrier gateway.

In the Subnets to route section, I configure a subnet residing in the Canada (BELL) – Toronto Wavelength Zone. For the subnet IPv4 CIDR Block, I use a block within the VPC range. Then, I complete the creation of the carrier gateway.

Now that networking is configured, I can deploy the portions of my application that require ultra-low latency in the Wavelength Zone and then connect that back to the rest of the application and the cloud services running in the Canada (Central) Region.

To run an EC2 instance in the Wavelength Zone, I use the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) run-instances command. In this way, I can pass an option to automatically allocate and associate the Carrier IP address with the network interface of the EC2 instance. Another option is to allocate the carrier address and associate it with the network interface after I create the instance. The Carrier IP address is only valid within the telecommunications provider’s network. The carrier gateway uses NAT to translate the Carrier IP address and send traffic to the internet or to mobile devices.

aws ec2 --region ca-central-1 run-instances
--network-interfaces '[{"DeviceIndex":0, "AssociateCarrierIpAddress": true, "SubnetId": "subnet-0d753f7203c2cfd42"}]'
--image-id ami-01d29fca5bdf8f4b4 --instance-type t3.medium

To discover the IP associated with the EC2 instance in the carrier network, I use the describe-instances command:

aws ec2 --region ca-central-1 describe-instances

In the NetworkInterfaces section of the output, I find the Association and the CarrierIP:

"Association": {
  "CarrierIp": "207.61.170.56",
  "IpOwnerId": "amazon",
  "PublicDnsName": ""
}

Now that the EC2 instance is running in the Wavelength Zone, I can deploy a portion of my application in the EC2 instance so that application traffic can be processed at very low latency without leaving the mobile network.

For my next steps, I look at Deploying your first 5G enabled application with AWS Wavelength and follow the walkthrough for a common Wavelength use case: implementing machine learning inference at the edge.

Availability and Pricing
The new Wavelength Zone in Toronto, Canada, is embedded in Bell Canada’s 5G network and is available today. EC2 instances and other AWS resources in Wavelength Zones have different prices than in the parent Region. See the Wavelength pricing page for more information.

AWS Wavelength is part of AWS for the Edge services that help you deliver data processing, analysis, and storage outside AWS data centers and closer to your endpoints. These capabilities allow you to process and store data close to where it’s generated, enabling low-latency, intelligent, and real-time responsiveness.

Start using AWS Wavelength to deliver ultra-low-latency applications for 5G devices.

— Danilo