Directly attached IP addresses

Binero cloud provides two main ways to use public IP addresses, directly attached IP addresses and Floating IP addresses.

You assign directly attached IP addresses directly on the port for instances.

This means that when you run for example ip addr show or ipconfig /all inside your instance operating system, you would (with a directly attached IP) see the public IP assigned on the interface.

When using a floating IP, the result would instead be the IP address from the subnet that you assigned to the instance. The floating IP is then redirected using NAT to and from the instance in the router.

Another key difference is that a directly attached IP is the only way to consume a public IPv4 without using a router. A router cannot use a directly attached IP or route traffic for one.

Its possible to connect a router to an instance that has a directly attached IP but since they will both provide a default route, it will require configuration of the instance to use a manual IP and also use static routes on the instance facing the router. This is not a recommended approach.

Note

Directly attached IP addresses are not designed to work well with routers but for a single instance that just want a direct internet connection and nothing else.

Key differences to floating IP addresses

  • Since a directly attached IP is setup on the instance, nothing is in front of the IP. No NAT or firewall (unless using security groups). This might be an upside for some applications that does not work well through NAT or admins that want to manage their entire network stack on the instance.

  • Directly attached IP addresses have a slight performance improvement over routers because of no NAT and no virtual network. This performance will be negligible in most use-cases.

  • Directly attached IP addresses does not combine with the majority of the networking functions in the platform which will rely on a router to work. For instance Load Balancer or Security groups.

Note

For a more versatile approach to networking, we recommend using Floating IP addresses. The primary use-case for directly attached IP addresses are single instances that need a less complicated method to reach the internet and publish services from an instance to be available on the internet.

Setting up a directly attached IP

The process for setting up a directly attached IP on an instance is not differing from any other method of setting up an IP in the platform except you would chose an IP from one of our external ranges instead of selecting one from a subnet.

Which network to choose would depend on in which availability zone your instance is running in.

  • europe-se-1-1a-net0 for instances placed in europe-se-1a availability zone

  • europe-se-1-1b-net0 for instances placed in europe-se-1b availability zone

Doing so, would place a public IP directly on the interface (NIC) of the instance and you would be able to see it by running for example ip addr show in Linux.

See also