Inside Cloud Networking
Description
Episode Transcript:
Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started!
Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead: Editorial Services.
Nikita: Hi everyone! For the last few weeks, we've been talking about different aspects of cloud data centers. Today, we're focusing on something that's absolutely key to how everything works in the cloud: networking and domain name systems.
Lois: And to guide us through it, we've got Sergio Castro, Senior Principal OCI Instructor at Oracle University. We'll start by trying to understand why networking is so crucial and how it connects everything behind the scenes. Sergio, could you explain what networking means in simple terms, especially for folks new to cloud tech?
Sergio: Networking is the backbone of cloud computing. It is a fundamental service because it provides the infrastructure for connecting users, applications, and resources within a cloud environment.
It basically enables data transfers. It facilitates remote access. And ensures that cloud services are accessible to users. This provided that these users have the correct credentials.
Nikita: Ok, can you walk us through how a typical network operates?
Sergio: In networking, typically starts with the local area network. Basically, networking is a crucial component for any IT service because it's the foundation for the architecture framework of any of the services that we consume today.
So, a network is two or more computers interconnected to each other. And not necessarily it needs to be a computer. It can be another device such as a printer or an IP TV or an IP phone or an IP camera. Many devices can be part of a local area network.
And a local area network can be very small. Like I mentioned before, two or more computers, or it could grow into a very robust and complicated set of interconnected networks. And if that happens, then it can become very expensive as well.
Cloud networking, it's the Achilles heel for many of the database administrators, programmers, quality assurance engineers, any IT other than a network administrator. Actually, when the network starts to grow, managing access and permissions and implementing robust security measures, this coupled with the critical importance of reliable, and secure performance, can create significant hurdles.
Nikita: What are the different types of networks we have?
Sergio: A local area network is basically in one building. It covers… it can be maybe two buildings that are in close proximity in a small campus, but typically it's very small by definition, and they're all interconnected to each other via one router, typically.
A metropolitan area network is a typical network that spans into a city or a metro area, hence the name metropolitan area network. So, one building can be on one edge of the city and the other building can be at the other edge of the city, and they are interconnected by a digital circuit typically. So that's the case. It's more than one building, and the separation of those buildings is considerable. It can go into several miles.
And a wide area network is a network that spans multiple cities, states, countries, even international.
Lois: I think we'll focus on the local area network for today's conversation. Could you give us a real-world example, maybe what a home office network setup looks like?
Sergio: If you are accessing this session from your home office or from your office or corporate office even, but a home office or a home network, typically, you have a router that is being provided to you by the internet vendor—the internet service provider.
And then you have your laptop or your computer, your PC connected to that router. And then you might have other devices either connected via cable—ethernet cable—or Wi-Fi. And the interconnectivity within that small building is what makes a local area network.
And it looks very similar once you move on into a corporate office. Again, it's two or more computers interconnected. That's what makes a local area network. In a corporate office, the difference with a home office or your home is that you have many more computers.
And because you have many more computers, that local area network might be divided into subnets. And for that, you need a switch. So, you have additional devices like a switch and a firewall and the router. And then you might have a server as well.
So that's the local area network. Two or more computers. And local area networks are capable of high speeds because they are in close proximity to each other.
Nikita: Ok… so obviously a local area network has several different components. Let's break them down. What's a client, what's a server, and how do they interact?
Sergio: A client basically is a requester of a service. Like when you hop into your browser and then you want to go to a website, for example, oracle.com, you type www.oracle.com, you are requesting a service from a server.
And that server typically resides in a data center like oracle.com under the Oracle domain is a big data center with many interconnected servers. Interconnected so they can concurrently serve multiple millions of requests coming into www.oracle.com at the same time.
So, servers provide services to client computers. So basically, that's the relation. A client requests a service and the server provides that service.
Lois: And what does that client-server setup actually look like?
Sergio: So, let's continue with our example of a web browser requesting a service from a web server.
So, in this case, the physical computer is the server. And then it has a software running on it. And that makes it a web server. So, once you type www.oracle.com, it sends the request and the request is received. And provided that everything's configured correctly and that there are no typos, then it will provide a response and basically give the view of the website.
And that's obviously in the local area network, maybe quality assurance when they were testing this for going live. But when it goes live, then you have the internet in the middle. And the internet in the middle then have many routers, hubs, switches.
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Nikita: Welcome back! Sergio, would this client-server model also apply to my devices at home?
Sergio: In your own local area network, you have client server even without noticing. For example, let's go back to our home office example. What happens if we add another laptop into the scenario?
Then all of these devices, they need a way for them to communicate. And for that, they have an IP address. And who provides that IP address?
The minute that you add, the other device is going to send a request to the router. The router, we call it router, but it has multiple functions like the mobile device, the handheld device that we call smartphone. It has many functions like camera and calendar and many other functionalities.
The router has an additional functionality called the dynamic host configuration protocol at DHCP server. So basically, the laptop requests, hey, give me an IP address, and then the router or the DHCP server replies, here's your IP address. And it's going to be a different one. So, they don't overlap. So that's an example of client server.
Lois: And where do virtual networks fit into all this?
Sergio: A virtual network is basically, a software version of the physical network. It looks and feels exactly as a physical network does. We do have a path or a communication, in this case, in the physical network, you have either Wi-Fi or you have internet cable. And then you add your workstations or devices on top of that. And then you might create subnets.
So, in a
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