Peter Fast
Projects/Networking

Google Cloud networking lab

Testing firewall behavior and distributing requests across three web servers.

StatusCompletedContextcourseworkPeriodCompleted October 2026Primary toolsGoogle Cloud · Compute Engine

The problem

A cloud network needs deliberate rules for which machines can communicate, while a public web endpoint needs a way to spread traffic across multiple servers.

01 · CONNECTTwo VMs

Cross-region communication inside one VPC.

02 · RESTRICTFirewall rules

Ping results changed as ingress rules were removed.

03 · DISTRIBUTEThree web servers

One public endpoint returned responses from each backend.

Project details

  • Initial internal and external pings: 3 of 3 responses each
  • After removing the ICMP rule: external ping lost 3 of 3 packets; internal ping still received 3 of 3
  • After removing the internal custom rule: internal ping lost 3 of 3 packets
  • Repeated HTTP requests returned responses labeled www1, www2, and www3
  • Temporary lab resources were deleted after testing; this is coursework, not a live production service

Features

Auto-mode VPC with two e2-micro VMs in separate regions
SSH and ping checks against internal and external addresses
Firewall-rule removal followed by repeated connectivity tests
Three Apache servers, a health check, target pool, reserved address, and forwarding rule
Google CloudCompute EngineVPC firewallCloud Shellgcloud CLINetwork load balancing

Approach

  1. 1

    Created a VPC and VMs in us-central1 and us-east1, then verified 3 of 3 ping responses to the second VM's internal and external addresses.

  2. 2

    Deleted the ICMP allow rule; the external ping lost all three packets while the internal ping still worked.

  3. 3

    Deleted the internal custom allow rule; the internal ping then lost all three packets.

  4. 4

    Created three Apache VMs, a health check, target pool, reserved IP, and forwarding rule; repeated curl requests returned www1, www2, and www3.

  5. 5

    Removed the temporary load balancer, servers, firewall rules, VMs, and VPC after testing.

What the tests showed.

The screenshots document the changed network behavior and the three backend responses. The lab infrastructure was temporary and removed after testing.

Terminal showing successful internal and external pings, followed by 100 percent packet loss after firewall rules were removed
Connectivity changed after the firewall rules were removed. Open the image to inspect the terminal output.
Cloud Shell output showing HTTP responses from web servers www1, www2, and www3
Repeated HTTP requests returned responses from all three web servers. Open the image for the full output.

Project journal

Browse the Work Journal ↗

Continue exploring

Back to all projects