Overview

The container network assigns IP addresses to pods in a cluster and provides networking services. In CCE, you can select the following network models for your cluster:

Network Model Comparison

Table 1 describes the differences of network models supported by CCE.

After a cluster is created, the network model cannot be changed.

**Table 1** Network model comparison
Dimension	Tunnel Network	VPC Network
Application scenarios	Low requirements on performance: As the container tunnel network requires additional VXLAN tunnel encapsulation, it has about 5% to 15% of performance loss when compared with the other two container network models. Therefore, the container tunnel network applies to the scenarios that do not have high performance requirements, such as web applications, and middle-end and back-end services with a small number of access requests. Large-scale networking: Different from the VPC network that is limited by the VPC route quota, the container tunnel network does not have any restriction on the infrastructure. In addition, the container tunnel network controls the broadcast domain to the node level. The container tunnel network supports a maximum of 2000 nodes.	High performance requirements: As no tunnel encapsulation is required, the VPC network model delivers the performance close to that of a VPC network when compared with the container tunnel network model. Therefore, the VPC network model applies to scenarios that have high requirements on performance, such as AI computing and big data computing. Small- and medium-scale networks: Due to the limitation on VPC routing tables, it is recommended that the number of nodes in a cluster be less than or equal to 1000.
Core technology	OVS	IPvlan and VPC route
Applicable clusters	CCE standard cluster	CCE standard cluster
Container network isolation	Kubernetes native NetworkPolicy for pods	No
Interconnecting pods to a load balancer	Interconnected through a NodePort	Interconnected through a NodePort
Managing container IP addresses	Separate container CIDR blocks needed Container CIDR blocks divided by node and dynamically added after being allocated	Separate container CIDR blocks needed Container CIDR blocks divided by node and statically allocated (the allocated CIDR blocks cannot be changed after a node is created)
Network performance	Performance loss due to VXLAN encapsulation	No tunnel encapsulation, and cross-node traffic forwarded through VPC routers (The performance is so good that is comparable to that of the host network, but there is a loss caused by NAT.)
Networking scale	A maximum of 2000 nodes are supported.	Suitable for small- and medium-scale networks due to the limitation on VPC routing tables. It is recommended that the number of nodes be less than or equal to 1000. Each time a node is added to the cluster, a route is added to the VPC routing tables. Evaluate the cluster scale that is limited by the VPC routing tables before creating the cluster.