What is the maximum number of internet gateways you can have in a single VPC?

In an Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), you can have only one internet gateway attached to a single VPC. The internet gateway serves as a horizontally scaled, redundant, and highly available VPC component that allows communication between instances in your VPC and the internet. It is essential for enabling your instances to obtain public IP addresses and allowing inbound or outbound traffic over the internet.

The design choice to limit the number of internet gateways to one per VPC is rooted in the architecture of how routing works within AWS. Since an internet gateway is responsible for managing the flow of traffic to and from the internet, having more than one would create complexity and potential conflicts regarding the routing of that traffic. Therefore, every VPC can have exactly one internet gateway that can be attached or detached as needed.

This configuration also avoids confusion in managing network paths for the resources in the VPC and provides a straightforward method for routing traffic to the internet while maintaining security and control over the network environment.