Internet Access on Alps¶
The Alps network is mostly configured with private IP addresses (172.28.0.0/16).
Login nodes have public IP addresses which means that they can directly access the internet, while compute nodes access the internet through NAT.
Public IPs are a shared resource
Be aware that public IPs, whether on login nodes or through NAT, are essentially a shared resource. Many services will rate limit or block usage based on the IP address if abused. An example is pulling container images from Docker Hub. Authenticating with Docker Hub makes their rate limit apply per user instead.
Accessing the public IP of a node¶
When on a login node configured with a public IP address, you can retrieve the public IP address for example as follows: