Encore: Inside Cloud Networking

In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham unpack the basics of cloud networking and the Domain Name System (DNS). You'll learn how local and virtual networks connect our devices, and how DNS seamlessly translates familiar names like oracle.com into addresses computers understand.   Cloud Tech Jumpstart: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/cloud-tech-jumpstart/152992 Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu   Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, Anna Hulkower, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode.   --------------------------------------------   Episode Transcript: 00:00 Hi there! We're hitting rewind for the next few weeks and bringing back some of our most popular episodes. So, sit back and enjoy these highlights from our archive. 00:12 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! 00:38 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.  01:04 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.  01:50 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. 03:21 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 seve