Networking and Content Delivery
Addressing and private paths
Each Compute Instance typically receives a public IPv4 address, IPv6 connectivity, and a private IP used for traffic between instances in the same data center. VLANs provide isolated layer-2 networks scoped to a single region. You assign an instance to a VLAN in its configuration and then configure the interface inside the operating system with an IP in your chosen subnet; Akamai does not hand out addresses on your VLAN.
Balancing and delivery
NodeBalancers are regional, highly available load balancers with configs for ports and protocols, health checks, TLS termination, and backend nodes that must be in the same region. Cloud Firewalls filter traffic statefully and are applied to instances and NodeBalancers. DNS Manager hosts authoritative zones. For global scale, Akamai's edge network provides CDN caching, traffic management, and web application firewall capabilities in front of your origins.
Traps to watch
- VLANs do not span regions; two instances in different regions cannot share a VLAN.
- A NodeBalancer with only private-facing backends is not reachable from the internet.
- Inbound traffic is free and unmetered, while outbound transfer is pooled across eligible services; overage is billed.
- Cloud Firewalls attach to compute instances and NodeBalancers, not to VLANs or volumes.
- Health checks that fail silently take a backend out of rotation, so a "working server" can still receive no traffic.
Rule of thumb
Design internet-facing entry through a NodeBalancer or Cloud Firewall, keep application-to-database traffic on a VLAN, and serve static or cacheable content through the CDN edge rather than from the origin instance. That one pattern answers a large share of design questions in this domain.