# Networks

## Overview
The Spearhead Cloud provides rich networking facilities for your containers and virtual machines. Each container/vm gets a full IP stack and you can define your own networks to create complex environments.

## Types of Networks
Spearhead Cloud provides two types of networks by default.

1. **Networks defined by us**. These are networks we create for tasks such as providing internet access or for private access (non-routable). These networks are usually shared by many customers.
2. **Networks defined by you**. These types of networks are sometimes called VXLAN or overlay networks. These networks are private and may be used to isolate applications or segments of your virtual network topology.

> Spearhead Cloud creates a default VLAN with id 2 in all datacenters. This network is private and only accesible by your instances.

## Public network
Spearhead Cloud provides a public network named "External" which you can use to attach your vm's to for direct public Internet access. 

Here is an example provisioning an instance explicitly using the External network:

```spearhead create -n nginx03 -N External e74a9cd0 468c03e2```

Here is an example of launching a docker container with a full IP stack on the public Internet. 

```spearhead-docker --tls run -d -P 443 --network External d03e867e8cfe``` 

Docker containers require explicit mapping of networks/ports. If you do not specify a network, the default fabric vlan will be used (i.e. no public IP for your containers).

> Last edit: 2018 Thu 26 Jul 19:51 GMT+3