The Invisible Glue

Before you dive headfirst into DevOps, let’s talk about the thing that makes all your servers, containers, and services actually work together: the network. It’s not glamorous—no blinking cursor magic here—but without it, your infrastructure is just a bunch of lonely machines humming in isolation.

Think of networking as the backstage crew in a theater production. Nobody notices them when things go right, but when something goes wrong—oh, you’ll hear about it. Loudly.

Networking in DevOps

Why does networking matter in DevOps? Because automation, deployments, and monitoring all depend on connectivity. Your CI/CD pipeline needs to talk to your servers. Your containers need to talk to each other. Your monitoring tools need to reach everything without getting lost in a maze of misconfigured routes.

In Kubernetes, networking becomes even more critical. Pods need to communicate across nodes, services need to expose endpoints, and ingress controllers need to route traffic correctly. Misconfigure a network policy or forget an ACL, and suddenly your microservices are playing hide-and-seek.

The Essentials You Can’t Ignore

Here’s what you need to know before you start calling yourself a DevOps engineer:

• IP Addresses – Every device needs an identity. IPv4 is still everywhere, but IPv6 is lurking in the shadows like a patient ninja.
• Subnetting – Because sometimes you need to slice your network into neat little chunks.
• Gateways – The exit door from your local network to the big wide world.
• Routing – How packets find their way home. Static routes, dynamic routes—learn the difference.
• DNS – The phonebook of the internet. If DNS breaks, everything breaks. (Pro tip: dig and nslookup are your friends.)
• DHCP – Because manually assigning IPs is a special kind of torture.
• Firewalls & ACLs – The bouncers at the club. They decide who gets in and who stays out.
• VLANs – When you need to keep things separate without buying more hardware.
• Load Balancing – Because one server can’t handle all the love your app is getting.

Closing Thoughts

Networking isn’t optional—it’s the foundation. You don’t need to become a CCIE overnight, but you should know enough to troubleshoot when your container can’t talk to the database or when your app mysteriously works on staging but dies in production.

Learn the basics, embrace the acronyms, and remember: in DevOps, “It’s always DNS” isn’t just a joke—it’s a survival tip.