As cloud adoption accelerates, organizations are facing a familiar pain: connecting workloads securely and privately across AWS, Azure, and GCP without introducing unnecessary complexity.
For decades, BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) has been the default for routing traffic across networks. But BGP was never designed for cloud-native architectures. It’s manual, fragile, and increasingly incompatible with the needs of distributed, fast-moving teams.
If you’re dealing with overlapping subnets, slow network provisioning, or fragile VPN-based setups, it’s time to explore better alternatives to BGP for multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
Why BGP Falls Short in Modern Cloud Architectures
BGP is a protocol built for the public internet, not for secure, private workload connectivity between clouds.
Here are a few reasons why BGP is no longer a fit for today’s infrastructure:
- Overlapping IPs: Teams across departments or clouds often reuse the same IP ranges. BGP can’t route overlapping subnets.
- Manual setup: BGP requires detailed route configurations, peer relationships, and maintenance.
- Slow changes: Any update to the network requires coordination, approvals, and testing.
- Security concerns: BGP-based solutions often involve exposing endpoints to the public internet through VPNs or tunnels.
As a result, BGP introduces complexity and fragility in environments where speed, automation, and security are essential.
The Requirements for Modern Cloud Connectivity
In contrast to the assumptions BGP makes, modern infrastructure teams need:
- Private-by-default connectivity
- Built-in IP conflict resolution
- Automated provisioning that integrates with CI/CD
- No dependency on public IPs or exposed ports
- Support for any cloud, any region, any provider
These needs call for a different approach: programmable networking built for developers and DevOps, not traditional network engineers.
What Are the Alternatives to BGP in the Cloud?
Several technologies have emerged to solve the problems BGP creates. The most promising alternatives combine automation, security, and compatibility across cloud providers.
Cloud-Native Private Link Services
Solutions like AWS PrivateLink, Azure Private Link, and Google Private Service Connect offer private access to services across accounts or VPCs.
While useful, they come with trade-offs:
- Vendor lock-in (each service is cloud-specific)
- Limited cross-cloud compatibility
- Often require network-level configuration and endpoint provisioning
These are valuable within a single cloud, but fall short when building a unified multi-cloud architecture.
BGP Replacement
Replace legacy BGP with a modern networking solution like noBGP to create a secure, software-defined layer above your existing infrastructure. They allow services to communicate via private virtual addresses, even across different networks and cloud providers.
Key benefits:
- No need to re-IP or redesign overlapping subnets
- Zero changes to cloud routing tables or VPNs
- Private, encrypted connections across environments
- Fully automated provisioning via APIs or Infrastructure as Code
Overlay networking abstracts away the network layer, allowing developers to focus on connectivity and security instead of IP math.
Eliminate Manual Network Configuration in Hybrid Cloud
One of the biggest pain points in hybrid cloud setups is the need to constantly tweak route tables, firewall rules, and NAT gateways to make services talk to each other.
A modern alternative like noBGP eliminates all of that:
- Nodes make outbound-only connections
- No public IPs or open ports
- Virtual addresses are assigned automatically
- All communication is encrypted
Instead of configuring each hop manually, you create a private connection between services with a single API call or CLI command.
This approach removes human error, speeds up deployment, and makes your network infrastructure invisible to the public internet.
Avoiding IP Overlaps When Linking Cloud Providers
IP conflicts are the silent killer of multi-cloud scale.
Your team may use 10.0.0.0/16 in AWS, while another team uses the same range in GCP. If you try to peer these networks, BGP won’t know how to route between them—and you’ll need to re-architect.
Overlay networking solves this without any re-IP.
noBGP lets workloads communicate using unique virtual addresses, regardless of underlying subnet conflicts. That means:
- No change to your current infrastructure
- No coordination between teams
- No collisions, even in large environments
This is especially critical for M&A, cross-team collaboration, or scaling across multiple regions and clouds.
Why noBGP Is Different
noBGP was built from the ground up for developers, DevOps teams, and modern infrastructure challenges.
It provides:
- Fully automated, encrypted networking across cloud, on-prem, and edge
- No reliance on public IPs, VPNs, or BGP
- Compatibility with overlapping IP spaces
- Easy integration with Terraform, CI/CD, and other tooling
noBGP turns networking into something you can provision and forget—just like compute and storage.
Conclusion
BGP had its moment. But today’s cloud-native architectures need a faster, safer, and simpler way to connect services.
If you want to avoid IP conflicts, automate connectivity, and eliminate public internet exposure, it’s time to replace BGP with an overlay network like noBGP.
You get secure, programmable networking without the complexity. And your teams get to move faster, with fewer roadblocks.
FAQ
Q: What are alternatives to BGP for private network connectivity across AWS, Azure, and GCP?
A: The most effective alternative is overlay networking, such as noBGP. It creates secure, private connections across cloud environments without relying on BGP, public IPs, or manual routing. Unlike cloud-specific solutions like AWS PrivateLink or complex platforms like Aviatrix, noBGP is cloud-agnostic, simple to deploy, and works even with overlapping subnets.
Q: How do I eliminate network configurations in a hybrid cloud environment?
A: By using a programmable overlay network like noBGP, you can eliminate the need to manually configure route tables, VPNs, NAT, or firewall rules. All connections are initiated outbound, encrypted end-to-end, and can be provisioned via CLI, API, or Terraform.
Q: What’s the best way to avoid overlap issues when linking different cloud providers?
A: noBGP resolves IP conflicts by remapping IP addresses assignments so all resources on a noBGP network appear as a local resource. This allows services in different clouds—using the same private IP ranges—to communicate securely without requiring subnet reconfiguration or renumbering. With noBGP, subnet overlaps are no longer a blocker.
