AWS Shield vs FastNetMon

AWS Shield helps AWS customers identify network security configuration issues and defend applications against web exploitation and distributed denial of service events. Shield Standard is automatically configured for AWS customers and provides common network- and transport-layer DDoS protection at no charge. Shield Advanced adds detection and automatic inline mitigation for sophisticated events across network, transport, and application layers. It monitors traffic patterns for anomalies such as HTTP and DNS query floods and supports EC2, Elastic Load Balancing, CloudFront, Global Accelerator, and Route 53. Advanced integrates with AWS WAF and AWS Firewall Manager, with event visibility through Amazon CloudWatch. It includes DDoS cost protection for qualifying usage spikes and up to 50 billion AWS WAF requests per subscribed payer account per calendar month for protected resources. The Advanced plan costs $3,000/mo, requires a one-year subscription commitment, and usage fees may apply. Network security director is in preview and is not included with either listed plan.

FastNetMon analyzes live network traffic to detect DDoS attacks in near real time and trigger mitigation according to operator-defined rules and workflows. It identifies volumetric and packet-rate attacks using configurable thresholds. Traffic telemetry can come from routers and switches through sFlow, NetFlow, IPFIX, jFlow, or mirrored traffic. Mitigation options include remote-triggered blackholing, BGP FlowSpec filtering, and diversion to external scrubbing centres. The platform supports IPv4 and IPv6, and is described as scaling to terabits of traffic and millions of flows per second on commodity hardware. Listed networking vendors include Cisco, Juniper, Nokia, Huawei, and Arista. Other capabilities include AWS and Google Cloud traffic visibility, Grafana dashboards, and blocklist filtering. Deployment options include Docker, virtual machines and hypervisors, Google Compute Engine, ARM 64, and Ubuntu LTS. The 30-day free trial includes detection, automated mitigation tools, and traffic visibility and analytics, with no credit card required. The 10G plan costs $115 a month for 10 Gbps observed traffic; monthly subscriptions also have a one-time $85 USD activation fee.