One decision tree, distilled from every comparison in this deck.

Ask the framing question before naming a service.

Connecting networks?2 only → Peering. 3+ → Transit Gateway / Cloud WAN

Exposing one service?External/isolated → PrivateLink. Internal mesh → VPC Lattice

Reaching on-premises?Bandwidth+latency → Direct Connect. Fast setup → VPN. Both → both

Fronting traffic?HTTP → ALB/CloudFront. Raw TCP/UDP → NLB/Global Accelerator

Naming a specific service before answering the framing question is exactly how a team ends up justifying a tool choice retroactively.