Allow to disable elastic IPs if they are unused

[jigarzon]

Is your request related to a problem? Please describe.

The module creates an Elastic IP as part of the VPC. I don't clearly understand the reasons, seems to be associated with conserving it across creations / destructions.

AWS charges a value when Elastic IPs are created and not associated with any service.

My basic understanding of this, suggests that in some circumstances (like mine, in which I'm not directly exposing services, only using API gateway), that charge doesn't make sense.

Describe the solution you'd like.

Allow to disable elastic IPs

[bryantbiggs]

Elastic IPs are only used on the NAT gateways

[jigarzon]

I still need NAT for outbound access to internet. But Elastic IPs, if I'm not misunderstanding this, are used for maintaining public IP addresses for inbound accessing our network

[bryantbiggs]

No, they are required when used to NAT to the public internet https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/vpc-nat-gateway.html

Public – (Default) Instances in private subnets can connect to the internet through a public NAT gateway, but cannot receive unsolicited inbound connections from the internet. You create a public NAT gateway in a public subnet and must associate an elastic IP address with the NAT gateway at creation. You route traffic from the NAT gateway to the internet gateway for the VPC. Alternatively, you can use a public NAT gateway to connect to other VPCs or your on-premises network. In this case, you route traffic from the NAT gateway through a transit gateway or a virtual private gateway.

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