Networks

A network is a private, region-scoped network for your pods. Pods on the same network talk to each other on private IPs and private hostnames, on their internal service ports directly - no public internet, no port mapping, no firewall hops.

Properties

• CIDR - the private address range, e.g. 10.20.0.0/24. Must be a private IPv4 range, with a prefix from the block's own size down to /30: 10.x allows /8-/30, 172.16-31.x allows /12-/30, 192.168.x allows /16-/30. Fixed once the network is created.
• Gateway - the first usable address in the range, assigned for you.
• Region - a network lives in one region and can only hold pods from that same region. Fixed once created.
• Name - a friendly label, unique within your account.

Same-network communication

When two pods share a network, one reaches the other via:

• The private IP assigned from the CIDR range.
• The private hostname shown on the other pod's Connection Strings tab (e.g. db-pod).

Both work on the internal service ports - SSH on 22, MySQL on 3306, your Node app on 3000, and so on. No need for the externally-mapped ports when you are already inside the network.

# From inside another pod on the same network
ssh ubuntu@web-pod
mysql -h db-pod -P 3306 -u root -p
curl http://api-pod:3000/health

The names above are stand-ins. A pod's private hostname is generated, along the lines of i-68f3c21a94b7e05d1c2a4f88, and is not the name you gave the pod. Each pod shows its own on the Networking tab, in the Private Network card's Hostname row.

Attaching pods

Pods join a network from the pod side - pick the network when you create the pod, or from the pod's Networking tab later. The network and the pod must be in the same region.

A pod created without picking a network joins your oldest existing network in that Region; only if you have none there is a new one created (it shows up in your Networks list and counts toward your network limit). Pods talk privately when they share a network - so pods created without picking one CAN reach each other, as long as they landed on the same reused network.

Use cases

• Run a database privately and expose only the web pod to the internet.
• Multi-pod apps where workers talk to a queue over private addresses.
• Stage and prod isolation, one network per environment.

Notes

• Networks are free.
• Networks are isolated per account.
• A network is created asynchronously and is ready to use once it goes Active (usually seconds).

See also

• Networks & firewalls guide
• Networks API