Getting started with IBM Cloud Direct Link

Use Direct Link to seamlessly connect your on-premises resources to your cloud resources. The speed and reliability of Direct Link extends your organization’s data center network and offers more consistent, higher-throughput connectivity, keeping traffic within the IBM Cloud network.

Direct Link highlights include:

Metered billing, which lowers the barrier of entry to IBM Cloud
Support for connections to multiple IBM Cloud accounts from a single direct link
Support for multiple VPCs (without classic access) from a single direct link within the same account
Support for both local and global routing options
Bring Your Own IP (BYOIP) address to create native connectivity between your on-premises environment and IBM Cloud
Support for new connect speeds for high bandwidth through Direct Link Connect (10, 25, 40, 50, and 100 Gbps).
Direct Link connections to and from transit gateways.
Support for BGP Message Digest 5 (MD5) Authentication and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD).

Direct Link Dedicated

Terminate a single-tenant, fiber-based, cross-connect into your own IBM Cloud Private network connection. This offering is also used by colocation facilities that are next to IBM Cloud PoPs and data centers.

To get started with IBM Cloud Direct Link Dedicated, follow these instructions for ordering the service.

Direct Link Connect

Use a service provider to quickly establish and deliver connectivity to IBM Cloud locations. These service providers are already connected to the IBM Cloud network that uses multi-tenant, high capacity links (also known as network-to-network interfaces, or NNI).

To get started using IBM Cloud Direct Link Connect, follow these instructions for ordering the service.

Learn more

IBM Cloud highly recommends that you establish a second, diverse direct link to prevent outages, whether unplanned, or planned due to maintenance. For more information, see Models for diversity and redundancy in Direct Link.
If you require a diverse, redundant, or multi-cloud deployment for Direct Link Connect, see Alternatives for your Direct Link Connect deployment.
For more information about Direct Link offerings, see the FAQs.

Currently, a migration path does not exist from Direct Link on Classic offerings to Direct Link. You must order a new Direct Link Dedicated or Direct Link Connect connection.