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Cloud NAT & Egress: Outbound Traffic Patterns

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Cloud NAT: enabling internet access from private subnets

Cloud VPCs use private RFC 1918 addresses internally. Private subnets have no direct internet route — instances can't send or receive traffic directly. For outbound-only internet access, a NAT Gateway translates private source addresses to a public Elastic IP.

This architecture keeps instances non-routable (no inbound internet path) while allowing them to call APIs, download packages, and fetch external data.

Packets in motion — click to inspect:

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