# What Is Elastic IP?

The Elastic IP (EIP) service enables your cloud resources to communicate with the Internet using static public IP addresses and scalable bandwidths. EIPs can be bound to or unbound from ECSs, BMSs, virtual IP addresses, NAT gateways, or load balancers.

Each EIP can be used by only one cloud resource at a time.

Figure 1 Connecting to the Internet using an EIP
Parent topic: Service Overview