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How Sonar Communicates - Egress IPs Explained

Mitchell Paul-Soumis Updated by Mitchell Paul-Soumis

Read Time: 3 min

Part of Sonar being Cloud Native means that the large majority of the application's infrastructure is virtualized. While this provides numerous advantages, it doesn't remove all inherent limitations. Chief among those limitations is simple data throughput. Sonar handles a continuous flow of data from every instance, and a lot of it. Optimizing this flow of data is critical, leading to the segregation of distinct components to facilitate how that data is transferred.

While this solution works, it does have its limitations. Segregating all this data means that the number of ports being assigned is monumental, and approaches the upper limit of what the OS can handle — if it were all being passed through a single IP, that is. Sonar's solution is simple, spread the load across multiple machines, ensuring a faster and more stable environment.

What is an Egress IP Address

An Egress IP Address, also known as an Outbound IP Address, is the communication IP Address used for communication that originates from Sonar towards native or 3rd-party integrations. For example, when your Sonar instance needs to update an IP address, it will communicate with your Inline Device via one of the available Egress IPs.

A full list of Egress IPs is available in the Sonar IP Addressing article, and this list is kept continuously up-to-date. As Sonar scales, more IP addresses are added to facilitate load balancing.

These IP addresses may be used interchangeably as your network communicates with Sonar. For this reason, it is strongly recommended to review the list and configure communication with all listed IP addresses.

FAQ

What does the Egress IP list affect?

Fundamentally, all communication leaving your Sonar instance will be impacted by the Egress IPs. This means your Networking, Integrations, and Webhooks all need some consideration for Whitelisting the Egress IPs.

Affected Features and their Relavenet Articles

Will more IPs be added?

As Sonar continues to expand, more host systems will be needed to continue providing your instance with the resources it needs to function at full speed. Scaling up Sonar means deploying these systems from new IP addresses, which means, unfortunately, that these new IP Addresses will have to be whitelisted.

Will I notice a difference when IP Addresses are added?

The most immediate difference you'll notice whenever a new Egress IP address is added will be the performance increase for your day-to-day operations. Otherwise, there is no noticeable difference as Egress IPs are expanded to manage the needs of clients.

Why does the US Datacenter have more IP Addresses than Canada?

The number of Egress IP addresses required to handle traffic on a datacenter is a direct reflection of how many clients exist on that datacenter. The US Datacenter has far more clients than the Canadian Datacenter, and requires more addresses as a result.

How do I know what Datacenter I'm connected to?

The only surefire way to know what location's datacenter you're connected through is by pinging your instance. The response will be from the Ingress IP, but will also contain the correct datacenter location:

This URL can be used to confirm which Egress IPs you need to whitelist. However, it's recommended that, even if you're on the Canadian Datacenter, you whitelist all other IPs. While it is unlikely that you'll be migrated, or that the IPs will switch, it is not impossible.

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