How Do You Find the Underlying Component in AWS for a Given URL Endpoint?

Problem scenario
You have been given a URL endpoint that is supported by some AWS service or services. How do you find out what the underlying service is?

Solution

  1. Determine the IP address. Ping the hostname. If you have a URL like this, https://acme.com/path/to/file.html, extract the domain name; you can deduce it is acme in the example. Open a command terminal and ping acme.
  2. Now that you have the IP address go to AWS console. Go to EC2 -> Instances and search for the IP address. If you cannot find it there, go to Reserved Instances, Spot Instances and finally Network Interfaces. Eventually you should find it.
  3. If you still have not found it, from a command prompt use "nslookup x.x.x.x" where x.x.x.x is the IP address. This may give you a clue of what to look for.

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