Global networking

Connect your Pods through a secure private network for internal communication

Global networking creates a secure, private network that connects all your Pods within your Runpod account. This feature enables Pod-to-Pod communication as if they were on the same local network, regardless of their physical location across different data centers.

Global networking is currently only available for NVIDIA GPU Pods.

How global networking works

Global networking provides each Pod with a private IP address accessible only to other Pods in your account. This creates an isolated network layer separate from the public internet, which can be used for:

• Distributed computing workloads.
• Microservice architectures.
• Secure database connections.
• Internal API communication.
• Multi-Pod machine learning pipelines.

The network operates at 100 Mbps between Pods, providing reliable connectivity for most inter-Pod communication needs while maintaining security through complete isolation from external networks.

Enable global networking

To enable global networking for your Pod:

1. Navigate to the Pods section and click Deploy.
2. At the top of the page, toggle Global Networking to filter and show only Pods with networking support.
3. Select your desired GPU configuration and complete the deployment process.

Once deployed, your Pod receives a private IP address and DNS name visible in the Pod details card.

Connect to other Pods

Each Pod with global networking enabled can be accessed by other Pods using its internal DNS name:

POD_ID.runpod.internal

Replace POD_ID with the target Pod’s ID. For example, if your Pod ID is abc123xyz, other Pods can reach it at abc123xyz.runpod.internal.

Test connectivity

Verify network connectivity between Pods by opening a web terminal in one Pod and running:

# To install ping on your Pod, run: apt-get install -y iputils-ping
ping POD_ID.runpod.internal

This confirms the private network connection is working correctly.

Run internal services

Services running on networked Pods are automatically accessible to other Pods without exposing ports publicly. Simply bind your service to all interfaces (0.0.0.0) and connect using the internal DNS name.

For example, a database on Pod abc123xyz listening on port 5432 would be accessible to other Pods at:

abc123xyz.runpod.internal:5432

Each service communicates privately through the internal network, reducing attack surface and improving security.

Security best practices

Global networking provides network isolation, but proper security practices remain essential. Never expose ports on Pods running sensitive services like databases, cache servers, or internal APIs; instead, use global networking for these components. Even within your private Pod network, you should implement authentication between services.

Supported data centers

Global networking is available in these 17 data centers worldwide:

Region ID	Geographic location
CA-MTL-3	Canada
EU-CZ-1	Czech Republic
EU-FR-1	France
EU-NL-1	Netherlands
EU-RO-1	Romania
EU-SE-1	Sweden
EUR-IS-2	Iceland
OC-AU-1	Australia
US-CA-2	California
US-GA-1	Georgia
US-GA-2	Georgia
US-IL-1	Illinois
US-KS-2	Kansas
US-NC-1	North Carolina
US-TX-3	Texas
US-TX-4	Texas
US-WA-1	Washington

Choose data centers strategically based on:

• Geographic proximity for lower latency
• Compliance requirements for data residency
• Availability of specific GPU types

Next steps

With global networking configured, explore these related features:

• Expose ports to make specific services publicly accessible
• Set up network volumes for shared persistent storage.
• Set up SSH access for secure Pod management.

For additional support or enterprise networking requirements, contact our customer service team.