What is the difference between a NAT gateway and vs internet gateway?

In the context of AWS, here are the differences between NAT gateway vs internet gateway given:-

NAT gateway

You can use a NAT gateway in the scenario when you have private subnets that need outbound Internet access but should not be directly accessible from the Internet.

This particular gateway provides a managed service that can allow Instances in private subnets for the task of initiating outbound traffic to the internet.

It can offer help in improving security by the technique of not exposing private instances directly to the internet.

Internet gateway

You can choose an Internet gateway in the scenario when you have public-facing resources or even Instances that need direct inbound and outbound Internet access.

It can enable Instances in the public subnets for the task of communicating directly with the internet and vice versa.

It is typically used for web-based servers, load balancers, or any service which named to be accessible from the internet.

Here is the example given in Python programming language by using Boto3 for the task of creating an internet gateway and a NAT gateway:

Import boto3

# Initialize the EC2 client

Ec2 = boto3.client(‘ec2’)

# Create an Internet Gateway

Internet_gateway = ec2.create_internet_gateway()

Igw_id = internet_gateway[‘InternetGateway’][‘InternetGatewayId’]

# Attach the Internet Gateway to a VPC

Vpc_id = ‘your-vpc-id’

Ec2.attach_internet_gateway(InternetGatewayId=igw_id, VpcId=vpc_id)

# Create a NAT Gateway

Subnet_id = ‘your-subnet-id’

Nat_gateway = ec2.create_nat_gateway(SubnetId=subnet_id, AllocationId=’your-eip-allocation-id’)

Nat_gateway_id = nat_gateway[‘NatGateway’][‘NatGatewayId’]