GCP Defaults to Premium Network Tier, Costing More

Google Cloud Platform's default to the Premium network tier leverages Google's private global fiber network, boasting over 100 points of presence (PoPs) worldwide. This network infrastructure is designed to minimize congestion and maximize performance, offering a 99.99% uptime SLA for Premium Tier VMs. Premium Tier uses "cold-potato routing," holding onto traffic within Google's network as long as possible. The alternative, Standard Tier, routes traffic over the public internet through multiple ISP hops, potentially increasing latency and variability. Standard Tier provides network quality and reliability comparable to other cloud providers. While Premium Tier costs more for egress traffic, Standard Tier is priced lower, making it suitable for non-latency-sensitive workloads. With Standard Tier, the first 200 GB of outbound traffic per month are free. For workloads demanding low latency, global presence, and high reliability, Premium Tier is the better choice. Premium Tier delivers traffic from external systems to Google Cloud resources using Google's low latency and reliable global network. Applications using external Application Load Balancers with backends in multiple regions require Premium Tier. Premium Tier typically delivers 20-50% lower latency for geographically distributed users. Consider GCP's Private Service Connect for secure and private communication between services within your VPC networks. It prevents network traffic from traversing the public internet, keeping data secure on Google's backbone network. Private Service Connect simplifies service management by removing the need to configure internet gateways or VPC peering connections. Using Private Service Connect can enhance security, improve performance, and simplify network architecture.