Introduction to networking in Google Cloud
Google uses the concept of Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to refer to their capability for creating your own private network withing their infrastructure. There are a few terms that will allow us to create a network of our design:
- Network – This is a virtual (because everything is virtual in the cloud) network that can span across the globe
- Subnet – This is an IP range that can be used by machines in a single region
- Firewall – Used to limit communication between machines in the same network
Network
A network (or VPC) is just a name used to group your network infrastructure. Subnets are defined inside a network and each host is part of one subnet.
Subnets
Subnets can be defined by region. You can choose any IP range defined as private as specified in RFC-1918 (basically anything inside these ranges: 10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255, 172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255 and 192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255).