Cloud Networking

Cloud Networking

When to Use

• Designing VPC architecture for a GCP deployment
• Configuring firewall rules, routes, or NAT
• Planning hybrid connectivity (VPN or Interconnect)
• Preparing for GCP Professional Cloud Network Engineer exam

Core Jobs

1. VPC Design: Auto vs Custom Mode

• Always use custom mode for production (control over IP ranges, no overlaps)

2. Subnet Design

• Subnets are regional (not zonal)
• Plan CIDR ranges to avoid overlap with on-prem and other VPCs
• Secondary ranges — for GKE pods and services (alias IP ranges)
• Private Google Access — enables VMs without external IPs to reach Google APIs

3. Firewall Rules

• Applied at the VPC level; affect all VMs in the VPC
• Ingress (inbound) and Egress (outbound) rules
• Priority 0–65534 (lower = higher priority); default deny at 65535
• Use network tags to apply rules to specific VMs
• Default rules: allow all egress, deny all ingress

4. VPC Connectivity Options

5. Hybrid Connectivity Decision

• Cloud VPN (HA VPN) — IPsec; 99.99% SLA; good up to ~1 Gbps
• Dedicated Interconnect — physical link; 10 or 100 Gbps; < 1ms latency
• Partner Interconnect — through telco partner; 50 Mbps–10 Gbps
• Rule of thumb: > 1 Gbps or latency-sensitive → use Interconnect

6. Cloud NAT

• Allows VMs without external IPs to reach the internet
• No ports opened inbound (stateful outbound only)
• Required for private GKE nodes to pull images from internet

Key Concepts

• Private Google Access — VMs without external IP reach *.googleapis.com
• Alias IP ranges — allow multiple IPs per VM NIC (used by GKE pods)
• Transitive routing — VPC Peering does NOT support it; use Shared VPC or NCC instead

Checklist

• Custom mode VPC (not auto mode) for production?
• Private Google Access enabled for subnets with private VMs?
• Firewall rules use network tags or service accounts (not IP-based)?
• HA VPN or Interconnect for on-prem connectivity?
• Cloud NAT configured for private VMs needing outbound internet?
• Shared VPC for multi-project architecture (not VPC Peering)?

Output Format

• 🔴 Critical — overlapping CIDR ranges, firewall rule allowing 0.0.0.0/0 ingress on SSH/RDP
• 🟡 Warning — auto-mode VPC in production, VPC Peering without transitive routing plan
• 🟢 Suggestion — Shared VPC for centralized network management, Cloud NAT for private VMs

Exam Tips

• VPC Peering = no transitive routing (A-B peered, B-C peered → A cannot reach C)
• Shared VPC = host project owns network; service projects use it (centralized control)
• Cloud VPN vs Interconnect threshold = ~1 Gbps (latency/bandwidth)
• Firewall rules: lower number = higher priority; default deny-all-ingress at 65535
• HA VPN = two tunnels, 99.99% SLA; Classic VPN = 99.9% SLA (avoid for production)