Networking, Segmentation, and Private Connectivity
What This Chapter Is About
Teach networking as the design of intentional communication paths, isolation boundaries, name resolution, inspection, and hybrid reachability.
Keep one durable idea in view:
A cloud network is a policy-shaped set of communication paths, not merely an address range.
Sections
How the Chapter Develops
The chapter develops in this order:
Start from required communication flows rather than network products.
Place workloads into address and segmentation boundaries.
Explain how routes, peering, transit, and inspection make paths possible and governable.
Add private managed-service access, DNS, and on-premises connectivity.
Apply the model to an internal application and assign ownership for routing, inspection, and name resolution.
Together, these sections show that this capability is an architecture responsibility and decision space, not a catalog of provider features.
What You Will Be Able to Do
By the end of this chapter, the reader should be able to:
Draw required and forbidden communication paths before choosing provider services.
Explain the different jobs of addressing, segmentation, routing, inspection, and DNS.
Compare direct peering, transit, private service access, VPN, and dedicated connectivity at a conceptual level.
Design a private hybrid connectivity shape with clear ownership and failure assumptions.
Key Ideas
Connectivity should be explicitly justified; isolation is a design outcome, not a default assumption.
Subnets organize placement, while routes and controls determine actual reachability.
Peering connects networks but does not automatically provide transitive routing.
Private access still depends on correct routing, DNS, identity, and service policy.
Hybrid networking is an end-to-end dependency that needs shared ownership and observability.