Which of the following states is true regarding internet gateways for VPCs?

Internet gateways play a crucial role in enabling communication between instances within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and the internet. One of the defining characteristics of internet gateways is that a VPC can only support one internet gateway at a time. This means that while you can attach an internet gateway to your VPC to allow traffic from your instances to reach the internet, you cannot have multiple internet gateways in use simultaneously within the same VPC.

This design is intentional to keep the networking architecture clean and manageable. It eliminates potential complexities and conflicts that could arise from having multiple gateways, ensuring that routing is straightforward and predictable. When you need to connect a VPC to the internet, you would attach one internet gateway, which can handle the network address translation (NAT) for instances that need public IP addresses while still maintaining private address space for internal resources.

This characteristic distinguishes internet gateways from other AWS networking components, which might have different limits and operational mechanisms. Understanding this unique trait of internet gateways helps in designing a VPC architecture that meets your application needs while ensuring efficient routing and connectivity.