Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Network
Virtual private cloud (VPC) software
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What is Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Network
Alibaba Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) is a cloud networking service that connects virtual private clouds (VPCs) and on-premises networks across regions using Alibaba Cloud’s global backbone. It targets enterprises that need multi-region network connectivity for distributed applications, shared services, and hybrid connectivity. The product focuses on centralized network management and routing between multiple VPCs and regions, typically used alongside Alibaba Cloud VPC, VPN Gateway, and Express Connect.
Multi-region VPC connectivity
CEN provides a way to interconnect multiple VPCs across different regions under a single networking construct. This supports hub-and-spoke or mesh-style connectivity patterns for shared services and multi-region application deployments. It reduces the need to build and maintain many point-to-point connections between networks.
Backbone-based private routing
CEN routes traffic over Alibaba Cloud’s backbone rather than the public internet for supported connectivity paths. This is useful for enterprise workloads that require consistent routing between regions and VPCs. It also simplifies network design compared with managing separate tunnels for each connection.
Centralized network administration
CEN centralizes attachment and route management for connected VPCs and related network resources. This helps standardize connectivity across business units and environments (e.g., dev/test/prod) when many VPCs are involved. It can improve operational consistency compared with managing connectivity independently per VPC.
Alibaba Cloud ecosystem dependency
CEN is primarily designed for connectivity among Alibaba Cloud networking constructs and services. Organizations with significant workloads on other cloud providers may need additional tooling and architectures to achieve consistent cross-cloud networking. This can increase complexity for multi-cloud network governance.
Complexity at scale
As the number of VPC attachments, regions, and routing domains grows, route planning and segmentation can become difficult to manage. Misconfiguration can lead to unintended reachability between environments if governance is not strict. Teams often need strong network engineering practices to operate it safely at enterprise scale.
Regional feature variability
Cloud networking capabilities and service availability can vary by region due to infrastructure and regulatory constraints. This can affect where CEN can be used and which connectivity options are practical for a given geography. Enterprises may need to validate regional support and design around gaps.
Plan & Pricing
Pricing model: Pay-as-you-go (usage- and subscription-based components)
Free tier/trial: New users eligible for a one-month free trial of a subscription CEN bandwidth plan (first subscription bandwidth plan, up to 5 Mbit/s). See notes below.
Billable items / Example costs (official Alibaba Cloud documentation):
- Connection (intra-region): Chinese Mainland — $0.05 per connection per hour; Outside the Chinese Mainland — $0.06 per connection per hour. Minimum billing unit: 1 hour. (Connection fees billed per connection × hours).
- Data process fee (ingress to transit router): $0.02 per GB (hourly billing based on ingress volume). Minimum billing unit: 1 hour.
- Inter-region bandwidth — two billing modes available:
- Pay-by-data-transfer (per-GB):
- Chinese Mainland (example rates): Gold: $0.072 per GB; Platinum: $0.108 per GB.
- (Other-region per-GB rates: refer to purchase page / region-specific pricing.)
- Pay-by-bandwidth (subscription, billed per month): Gold only; tiered USD per Mbps/month (example for Chinese Mainland):
- 0–100 Mbps: $34 per Mbps per month
- 101–1,000 Mbps: $13 per Mbps per month
-
1,000 Mbps: $8 per Mbps per month
- Minimum subscription billing period: 1 month.
- Pay-by-data-transfer (per-GB):
Notes & rules (official):
- CEN intra-region communication (network instances in the same region attached to the same CEN instance) is free of charge; cross-region traffic is charged.
- Basic Edition transit routers / some CCN intra-region connections do not incur connection and data process fees; Enterprise Edition transit routers incur connection and data process fees.
- Prices listed in documentation are catalog prices; final prices may vary by region and on the product purchase page.
- Minimum billing units: connection/data-process/pay-by-data-transfer billed hourly (minimum 1 hour); pay-by-bandwidth subscription billed per month (minimum 1 month).
Seller details
Alibaba Group Holding Limited
Hangzhou, China
1999
Public
https://www.alibabagroup.com/
https://x.com/AlibabaGroup
https://www.linkedin.com/company/alibaba-group/
