Networking fundamentals

Networking plays a critical role in virtually every aspect of Google Cloud Platform. There are a few core components to networking on GCP, primarily Compute Engine instances, networks, subnets, routes, and firewall rules. We’ve touched lightly on many of these components in previous chapters. Here, we’ll take a much closer look at what each of these components does. Understanding how these components operate and interact with one another is an important step in getting the most out of Google Cloud Platform.

Virtual private networks

The fundamental building block of networking on Google Cloud is the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network, often referred to simply as network. VPC networks are global resources with project-specific scope. In other words, a single network may be used to connect various Google Cloud resources across zones and regions, but not across different projects. This lays the groundwork for many important security concepts within Google Cloud Platform...