Connectivity
Private circuits, VPNs, internet paths, cloud exchanges, branches and user access.
Cloud networking & connectivity
The connective layer behind secure, resilient cloud adoption.
Cloud networking links users, applications, data centres, cloud regions, SaaS platforms and other providers. The design must work across technology, operational and organisational boundaries.
The discipline
Good cloud networking creates controlled reachability.
The objective is not to connect everything to everything. It is to make required traffic paths explicit, resilient, observable and supportable—while limiting unintended access and hidden dependencies.
Core design domains
Eight areas that should be treated as one system
Routing
Addressing, route propagation, path preference, symmetry, summarisation and ownership.
Segmentation
Environment, application and trust boundaries that limit blast radius and simplify policy.
Security
Inspection points, firewalls, network controls, exposure paths and responsibility boundaries.
Resilience
Failure domains, path diversity, recovery behaviour, service continuity and testing.
DNS & traffic management
Name resolution, service discovery, load balancing and failover behaviour.
Observability
Flow visibility, logging, alarms, performance indicators and troubleshooting evidence.
Operations
Change ownership, runbooks, support boundaries, escalation paths and knowledge transfer.
Questions a design should answer
A useful architecture removes ambiguity.
What must communicate?Applications, users, platforms and external dependencies.
Which path will traffic take?In steady state, during maintenance and during failure.
Where is policy applied?Trust boundaries, firewalls, routing controls and service endpoints.
What happens when a dependency fails?Circuits, gateways, regions, providers, DNS and operational processes.
Who owns each decision?Customer teams, providers, carriers, integrators and operational support.
When to involve a specialist
Early enough to influence the design—not only when connectivity fails.
Before a landing zone is approved
Validate routing, segmentation, shared services and connectivity patterns before workloads multiply.
Before a migration wave is committed
Confirm dependencies, lead times, firewall changes, DNS and cutover constraints.
Before a critical production change
Review failure behaviour, validation, rollback and operational ownership.
When providers disagree
Create a coherent end-to-end view across cloud, carrier, security and data-centre boundaries.
Typical architecture package
From discussion to reviewable evidence
A well-scoped engagement can produce a compact package that supports approval, implementation and handover.
HLDHigh-level designContext, requirements, architecture and decisions
MAPArchitecture diagramsTopology, traffic flows and failure paths
RISKRisk & decision registerAssumptions, dependencies and unresolved items
PLANImplementation guidanceValidation, cutover and rollback considerations
Need a second set of eyes?