AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO AMAZON VPCS

Summary from the TLDR Web Dev newsletter

The need for Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) arose from two main problems: IP address conflicts between customers' on-premise and AWS servers, and security vulnerabilities from a shared network. VPCs solve these issues by providing each customer with an isolated private network within AWS, preventing IP address collisions and improving security. This isolation is achieved through a "mapping service" that routes traffic within each VPC, effectively creating separate networks despite instances potentially sharing IP addresses.