Enhanced networking is a virtualization method that can be enabled on a per-instance type basis, leveraging higher network throughput at the instance level, improving higher I/O performance and low latency. There are two ways to achieve this networking feature.

• Intel 82599 VF: Virtual Function (VF) is a virtualization method compatible with  C3, C4, D2, I2, M4, and R3 instance types with velocities of up to 10 Gbps. You can verify your actual support for VF with the following command:

aws ec2 describe-instance-attribute --instance-id instance_id --attribute sriovNetSupport

• Elastic Network Adapter: The Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) is a built-in capability for EC2 instances that can be enabled at the OS kernel level. This feature is compatible with C5, C5d, F1, G3, H1, I3, m4.16xlarge, M5, M5d, P2, P3, R4, R5, R5d, X1, X1e, and z1d instance types. You can verify your actual support for ENA with the following command:

aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids instance_id --query "Reservations[].Instances[].EnaSupport"