Google Cloud Platform IP Ranges and Their Importance

Google Cloud Platform uses a vast range of IP addresses to provide its services, with over 100 million IP addresses allocated across its network.

These IP addresses are used to establish connections between users and Google Cloud services, making them a crucial component of the platform.

In order to access Google Cloud services, your computer or application must be able to communicate with the Google Cloud IP addresses, which are listed in the IP ranges provided by Google.

Google Cloud IP ranges are also used to help prevent IP spoofing and other types of security threats.

For your interest: Exclude Internal Traffic Google Analytics 4

External IP addresses are necessary for communicating with the internet or resources in another VPC network.

You can assign an external IPv4 or IPv6 address to an instance, but only resources with an external IP address can directly communicate with resources outside of the VPC network.

External IPv4 addresses are available to all VMs, and a single IPv4 address is assigned from Google's ranges of external IPv4 addresses.

A different take: Azure Ip Range

External IPv6 addresses are available to VMs connected to a subnet with an external IPv6 range, and a single /96 range of IPv6 addresses is assigned from the subnet's external IPv6 range.

You can reserve a static external IPv6 address from the subnet's IPv6 range and assign it to a VM instance.

Here's a summary of the IP address types:

Google Cloud labels IP addresses as global or regional, indicating how they're used. Regional addresses are associated with regional resources, such as VMs, in specific Google Cloud regions like us-east4 or europe-west2.

To communicate with the internet or resources in another VPC network, you can assign an external IPv4 or IPv6 address to an instance. This allows sources outside the VPC network to reach a specific resource using its external IP address.

External IPv4 addresses are available to all VMs and are assigned from Google's ranges of external IPv4 addresses. External IPv6 addresses are available to VMs connected to a subnet with an external IPv6 range and are assigned from the subnet's external IPv6 range.

For more insights, see: Azure Data Factory Ip Address Range

VM interfaces are assigned IP addresses from the subnet they're connected to. Each VM interface has one primary internal IPv4 address, which is assigned from the subnet's primary IPv4 range.

Internal IPv4 addresses can be assigned automatically by Compute Engine or manually by specifying a specific address when creating a VM instance. You can also reserve a static internal IPv4 address for your project and assign it to a VM instance.

Internal IPv6 addresses can be assigned in two ways: automatically by Compute Engine or by reserving a static internal IPv6 address for your project and assigning it to a VM instance.

Here's a summary of how to manage IP addresses: