

# AWS Local Zones concepts
<a name="concepts-local-zones"></a>

These are the essential concepts in AWS Local Zones:
+ **Local Zone** — An extension of an AWS Region in geographic proximity to your users, where the Local Zone infrastructure is deployed.
+ **VPC** — A virtual private cloud (VPC) is a virtual network that closely resembles a traditional network that you'd operate in your own data center. You create subnets in your VPCs and deploy AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, in your subnets.

  A VPC can span Availability Zones, Local Zones, and Wavelength Zones.
+ **Local Zone subnet** — A subnet that you create in a Local Zone. You can deploy supported AWS resources in your Local Zone subnets.
+ **Group Long Name** — The Local Zone group name.
+ **Network Border Group** — A unique group from which AWS advertises public IP addresses. It consists of Availability Zones, Local Zones, or Wavelength Zones. A pool of public IP addresses can be explicitly allocated for use in a network border group. Once provisioned, IP addresses cannot move between network border groups. For example, the `us-west-2-lax-1` network border group consists of two Local Zones in Los Angeles, and the `us-east-1-bos-1` network border group consists of a single Local Zone in Boston. You can move an IP address between the two Los Angeles Local Zones, but you cannot move an IP address from a Los Angeles Local Zone to the Boston Local Zone. 

  When creating a subnet, you will find the network border group for the Local Zones in the **Availability Zone** drop-down list.
+ **Parent Region** — The Region that handles some of the Local Zone and Wavelength Zone control plane operations, such as API calls.
+ **Parent Zone ID** — The ID of the zone that handles some of the Local Zone and Wavelength Zone control plane operations, such as API calls
+ **Geography** — The geography for a Local Zone is the specific physical location of its infrastructure. This information can help you meet your regulatory, compliance, and operational requirements.

For more information, see:
+ [AWS Site-to-Site VPN concepts](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpn/latest/s2svpn/VPC_VPN.html#concepts) in the *AWS Site-to-Site VPN User Guide*.
+ [Route table concepts](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/VPC_Route_Tables.html#RouteTables) in the *Amazon VPC User Guide*.