Cloud-Native Networking Architecture Guide

Understanding how packets traverse physical cables, operating system kernels, virtual network interfaces, overlay networks, and reverse proxies is the most fundamental diagnostic skill in cloud-native infrastructure engineering.

flowchart LR
    Client([Client Browser]) --> L7[Layer 7: HTTP/2 / TLS 1.3]
    L7 --> L4[Layer 4: TCP Handshake / Flow Control]
    L4 --> L3[Layer 3: IP Routing / Next-Hop / BGP]
    L3 --> Overlay[Overlay CNI: VXLAN / Geneve / WireGuard]
    Overlay --> Pod[Target Kubernetes Container]

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1. Core Curriculum & Modules

Foundations & Protocols

• OSI 7-Layer Model: Protocol Data Units (PDUs), packet encapsulation, and layer-by-layer troubleshooting.
• IP Architecture: 3-way handshake, 4-way close, TIME_WAIT vs CLOSE_WAIT, sliding window flow control, and BBR vs CUBIC congestion algorithms.
• IP Routing & BGP: Longest Prefix Match (LPM), routing tables, OSPF link-state vs BGP path-vector, and ECMP hash polarization.

Real-Time & Streaming Protocols

• WebRTC Architecture: Peer-to-peer audio/video streaming, SDP signaling, and NAT traversal via STUN/TURN.
• Server-Sent Events (SSE): Lightweight HTTP streaming for LLM token-by-token generation.

Cloud & Kubernetes Networking

• AWS VPC Networking: Subnets, Route Tables, Internet Gateways, NAT Gateways, Transit Gateway, and PrivateLink.
• Kubernetes Networking: Pod-to-Pod communication, ClusterIP/NodePort Services, CNI plugins (Cilium, Calico), and Ingress controllers.

More in this section

• dns over https — DNS over HTTPS (DoH) works by taking the traditional process of looking up a website’s IP address and wrapping it in the same…
• Packet flow — 1. TCP SYN-ACK Handshake.
• TCP — TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)

Further reading

• Ipv6: why we need ipv6 (video)
• Ipv6: indepth into ipv6 ( and ipv4) (video)
• Ipv6: aws (video)

Across the wiki

• Amazon VPC — virtual networks (AWS)
• Azure Virtual Network (VNet) & Hybrid Routing — virtual networks (Azure)
• GCP Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) & Networking — virtual networks (GCP)
• Linux Networking — virtual networks (Linux)