Cloud Networking & Security Made Clear
Beginner-friendly explanations on networking, cloud architecture, traffic flow, and security fundamentals — focused on clarity, not vendor marketing.
Our Mission
Free, foundational education in cloud networking and security — for anyone, anywhere. Clarity makes learning accessible to everyone.
Explore Topics
Cloud Networking
Flow, Connection, Session — firewall fundamentals explained clearly.
Cloud Security
DDoS attack types and how modern networks defend against them.
Blog
Deep-dives including A Packet Journey — from bits to the cloud.
What You Will Learn
- Cloud Networking — routing
- Cloud Traffic flow — DNS, TCP, Flow, Connection, Session
- Cloud Architecture — data centers, virtualization
- Cloud Security — firewalls, IDS/IPS, TLS, DDoS
About Me
I bring over two decades of experience in networking and security, and I continue to share my knowledge through research and blogging, with a strong focus on clarity and practical understanding.
- Network Architecture — Private and Public cloud environments for enterprise customers
- Security Expertise — PaloAlto, Fortinet, f5, Cisco,
- Cloud Infrastructure Design — AWS, Azure, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
- Network Automation & IaC — Terraform, Kubernetes Netwokring Cilium
I currently lead Cloud Network & Security for a large bank, managing a large-scale multi-cloud environment. Before this, I spent 16 years with GBM, IBM's representative office in the Middle East.
I strongly believe that anyone with curiosity, consistency, and a willingness to learn can reach meaningful levels in their career.
Connect
Cloud Networking
Core concepts every network engineer must know — Flow, Connection, and Session.
Flow
One direction of traffic, defined by the 5-tuple. Two flows make a full conversation.
Connection
Both directions combined — a full conversation between two devices.
Session
The firewall's internal state entry tracking a connection in its session table.
Flow
- Unidirectional — one direction only
- Used in monitoring systems — NetFlow, IPFIX, sFlow
- Used in cloud flow logs — AWS VPC Flow Logs, Azure NSG Flow Logs
Think of a flow as one direction of traffic.
Connection
- Bidirectional — both directions combined
- TCP connections begin with the SYN handshake
- Often used in traditional firewall terminology
- UDP is connectionless but firewalls still track it
Think of a connection as a full conversation.
Session
- Original and translated IPs/ports — pre and post NAT
- Policy ID — which rule matched
- Timeout values — when to expire the entry
- Security profile information — AV, IPS, URL filtering
- Byte and packet counters — traffic statistics
Think of a session as the firewall's memory of a conversation.
How They Relate
2 flows, 1 connection, and 1 session in the firewall's state table.Cloud Security
How modern networks protect applications from volumetric, protocol, and application-layer attacks.
What is a DDoS Attack?
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources.
Testing & Resilience Validation
L3 / L4 Lab Tools
Use only in environments you own or are authorised to test.
- hping3 Protocol behaviour testing
- iperf3 Throughput baseline
- tcpdump Packet inspection
Layer 7 Load Testing
Simulate real users and APIs to validate WAF, caching, and autoscaling.
- ab Apache Benchmark — quick concurrency test
- k6 Scripted HTTP tests
- JMeter API workflows
- Locust User behaviour simulation
- Gatling High-performance load
The Goal of DDoS Protection
The objective is not just to block traffic, but to ensure legitimate users always get through while attacks are absorbed at the network edge.
Blog
Deep-dives on cloud networking and security concepts.
A Packet Journey — From Your Computer to the Cloud
Follow data from 0s and 1s all the way to the cloud — binary, transistors, OSI layers, MAC vs IP, network media, and real-world bandwidth explained.
A Packet Journey
From Your Computer to the Cloud
The Binary World: 0s and 1s
Have you ever wondered how data from your computer actually moves across the internet and ends up in the cloud? Let's start from the very basics.
Computers operate using the binary number system — only two digits: 0 and 1.
Example: To convert 13 into binary:
13 = 8 + 4 + 1 = 2³ + 2² + 2⁰ → 1101
How Are 0s and 1s Created?
At the lowest level, computers use transistors — On (1) or Off (0). Each switch is a bit; eight bits form a byte.
How Does the Computer Understand Them?
- Hardware layer
- Kernel and device driver layer
- Operating system layer
- Application layer
When you save a file, the application informs the OS, which uses drivers to write data to the drive.
Encoding of Data
Every character is encoded using ASCII or UTF (Unicode). The word network uses 7 characters → file size is 7 bytes.
MAC vs IP Address
Systems care about IP addresses at the software level. At the local network level, devices use MAC addresses — 48-bit identifiers (IEEE 802.3) that never leave the local network.
OSI Layers and Packet Formation
- Transport → Segment
- Network → Packet
- Data Link → Frame
- Physical → Bits
Each layer adds its own header. At the destination, headers are removed in reverse order.
Good Reference Read
Network Media
- Ethernet: electrical pulses over copper or fiber
- Fiber: light pulses over glass
- Wireless: radio waves (WiFi)
- PAN: Bluetooth
Network Topologies
- Bus · Ring · Star (most common) · Mesh
Speed, Bandwidth, Latency & Throughput
Bandwidth: Maximum data capacity (bps).
Latency: Time taken for a packet to travel (ms).
Throughput: Actual successful data rate.
Speed: Physical signal rate of the medium.
A 1 Gbps connection = 128 MB/s. A 1 GB file downloads in ~8 seconds.
The Journey Ends in the Cloud ☁️
The data you're reading travelled from a VS Code editor, across multiple networks, and reached you via this page hosted in the cloud.