Episode 2 — Your Hybrid Network Mental Model: zones, flows, and control points
Hybrid networking scenarios require you to reason about traffic paths without relying on diagrams, so this episode builds a mental model that stays stable across cloud and on-prem designs. It starts by defining zones as trust boundaries with a purpose: trusted segments that hold sensitive services, untrusted segments exposed to unknown traffic, and screened areas that host services requiring controlled access. The episode then introduces traffic flow direction as a design clue, distinguishing north/south paths that cross perimeter boundaries from east/west paths that move between internal services. Finally, it identifies control points as the places where policy and visibility become enforceable, such as gateways, firewalls, WAFs, identity checks, and segmentation boundaries, and explains why control points should follow flows rather than being scattered indiscriminately.
