Private network and sniffing protection

Question

Hey there

I was reading this article https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-nginx-load-balancing-with-ssl-termination

since the setup has a load balancer with ssl and communicates with plain http with backend servers, I was wondering if there is any protection in the private network to prevent others to sniff it.

I think that the private network for a user should be a private network only for that user, but not really sure about this.

Thanks in advance, Mike.

Bobby Iliev · Answer

Hi there,

I just came across this question and decided to post a small update here in case that anyone else comes across this in 2020.

I would recommend considering the new DigitalOcean VPC networks.

VPC networks are completely isolated from both other customers and other VPCs on your own account. See here for more details:

https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/networking/vpc/

It’s also worth pointing out that DigitalOcean private networks provided account level isolation since July 18, 2018. The big changes with the release of VPCs are:

You can create multiple VPCs that are isolated from each other
You can define the IP range for your VPCs yourself

Source

Andrew SB · Answer

Currently private networking on DigitalOcean only segments the traffic off of the public network. It doesn’t implement a VLAN on an individual per customer basis. We’re considering implementing this in the future. You can follow the related request on our UserVoice page to keep up to date with any new developments.

Question

Private network and sniffing protection