Inside Cloud Networking

Oracle University Podcast

In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham team up with Senior Principal OCI Instructor Sergio Castro to unpack the basics of cloud networking and the Domain Name System (DNS). You'll learn how local and virtual networks connect 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, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. ------------------------------------------------ Episode Transcript:

00:00

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!

00:25

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.

00:52

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.

01:38

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.

03:09

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.

04:10

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.

05:47

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.

06:50

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.

07:51

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08:16

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.

09:32

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 software-defined network or in a virtual network, you have a software-defined connectivity, physical cable and all of that. Everything is software-defined. And it looks exactly the same, except that everything is software.

In a software or a virtual network, you can communicate with a physical network as if that software or that virtual network was another physical network. Again, this is a software network or a software-defined network, a virtual network, no longer a physical network.

10:42

Lois: Let's switch gears a little and talk about Domain Name Systems. Sergio, can you explain what DNS is, and why it's important when we browse the web?

Sergio: DNS is the global database for internet addressing. The DNS plays a very important role on the internet. And many internet services are closely related to DNS.

The main functionality of DNS is to translate easy-to-remember names into IP addresses. Some IP addresses might be very easy to remember. But however, if you have many of them, then it's easier to remember oracle.com or ucla.edu or navy.mil for military or eds.org for organization or gobierno.mx for Mexico. So that's the main feature of the DNS.

It's very similar to a mobile phone to the contacts application in your mobile phone, because the contacts application maps names to phone numbers. It's easier to remember Bob's phone than 555-123-4567. So, it's easier to remember the name of the persons in your contacts list, like it is easier to remember, as previously mentioned, oracle.com than 138.1.33.162.

Again, 138.1.33.162 might be easy for you to remember if that's the only one that you need to remember. But if you have 20, 40, 50, like we do with phone numbers, it's easier to remember oracle.com or ucla.edu. And this is essential, this mapping, again, because we work with names it's easier for us to remember.

However, the fact is that computers, they still need to use IP addresses. And remember that this is the decimal representation of the binary number. It's a lot harder for us to remember the 32 bits or each one of the octets in binary. So that's the main purpose of DNS.

Now the big difference is that the contact list in a cell phone is unique to that individual phone. However, DNS is global. It applies to everybody in the world. Anybody typing oracle.com will translate that into 138.1.33.162.

Now this is an actual IP address of oracle.com. Oracle.com has many IP addresses. If you ping oracle.com, chances are that this is one of the many addresses that maps to oracle.com.

13:35

Nikita: You mentioned that a domain name like oracle.com can have many IP addresses. So how does DNS help my computer find the right one?

Sergio: So, let's say that you want to look for www.example.com, how do you do that? So, you type in your computer instance or in your terminal, in your laptop, in your computer, you type in your browser "www.example.com."

If the browser doesn't have that information in cache, then it's going to first ask your DNS server, the one that you have assigned and indicating in your browser's configuration. And if the DNS server then it will relate that the information is 96.7.128.198. This address is real, and your browser will go to this address once you type www.example.com.

14:34

Nikita: But what happens if the browser doesn't know the address?

Sergio: This is where it gets interesting. Your browser wants to go to www.example.com. And it's going to go and look within its cache. If it doesn't have it, then the first step is to go ahead to your DNS server and ask them, hey, if you don't know this address, go ahead and find out.

So, it goes to the root server. All the servers are administrated by IANA. And it's going to send the information, hey, what's the IP address for www.example.com?

And if the root server doesn't know it, it's going to let you know, hey, ask the top-level domain name server, in this case, the .com. It's a top-level domain name server.

So, you go ahead and ask this top-level domain name server to do that for you. In this case, again, the .com and you asked, hey, what's the IP address for example.com?

And if the top-level domain name server doesn't know, it's going to ask you, hey, ask example.com. And example.com is actually within the customer's domain. And then based on these instructions you ask, what is the IP address for www.example.com?

So, it will provide you with the IP address. And once your DNS server has the IP address, then it's going to relate to your web browser. And this is where your web browser actually reaches 96.7.128.198. Very interesting, isn't it?

16:23

Lois: Absolutely! Sergio, you mentioned top-level domain names. What are they and how are they useful?

Sergio: A top level domain is the rightmost segment of a domain name, and it's located after the last visible dot in the domain name.

So oracle.com or cloud.oracle.com is a domain name. So, .com is a top-level domain.

And the purpose of the top-level domain is to recognize certain elements of a website. This top-level domain indicates that this is a commercial site. Now, .edu, for example, is a top-level domain name for higher education.

We also have .org for nonprofit organizations, .net for network service providers. And we also have country specific. .ca for Canadian websites, .it for Italian websites. Now .it, a lot of companies that are in the information technology business utilizes this one to indicate that they're in information technology.

There's also the .us. And for US companies, most of the time this is optional. .com, .org, .net is understood that they are from the US.

Now if .com is a top-level domain name, what is that .oracle in cloud? So, Oracle is the second-level domain name. And in this case, Cloud is the third-level domain name.

And lately you've been seeing a lot more top-level domain names. These are the classic ones. But now you get .AI, .media, .comedy, .people, and so on and so forth. You have many, many, even companies now have the option of registering their company name as the top-level domain name.

18:24

Nikita: Thank you, Sergio, for this deep dive into local area networks and domain name systems. If you want to learn about the topics we covered today, go to mylearn.oracle.com and search for the Cloud Tech Jumpstart course.

Lois: And don't forget to join us next week for another episode on networking essentials. Until next time, this is Lois Houston…

Nikita: And Nikita Abraham, signing off!

18:46

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