Network Service Tiers

Google Cloud Network Service Tiers allows you to choose the network quality you need for your workloads. GCP offers two tiers with different performance and pricing characteristics.

Network Tiers:

1. Premium Tier - Routes traffic over Google global private network (default). Low latency, high reliability. Traffic enters Google network at the closest point to the source and stays on Google backbone until it reaches the destination.

2. Standard Tier - Routes traffic over the public internet for most of its journey. Lower cost but higher latency and less reliability than Premium Tier. Traffic enters Google network closer to the GCP region.

Key Differences:

1. Latency - Premium Tier provides consistently lower latency globally.

2. Cost - Standard Tier has lower egress costs (approximately 24-33% cheaper).

3. Global LB - Only available with Premium Tier. Standard Tier only supports regional load balancing.

4. SLA - Premium Tier has better network performance SLA.

The below example shows how to configure network tiers for VMs and forwarding rules.

It gives the following output,

Created VM [my-standard-vm] with STANDARD network tier.
Created VM [my-premium-vm] with PREMIUM network tier.
STANDARD

When to use each tier:

Premium Tier - Production workloads, latency-sensitive applications, global load balancing, and applications where network reliability is critical.

Standard Tier - Development/test environments, batch workloads, cost-sensitive scenarios where latency is not critical, and workloads with regional (not global) traffic patterns.