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Networks

A network is a logical grouping of nodes that work together.

Purpose​

Networks help you:

  • Organize nodes by environment, region, or project
  • Isolate workloads between teams or applications
  • Manage permissions with role-based access
  • Deploy pipelines to groups of nodes

Common Patterns​

By Environment​

├── dev-network
│   └── 5 development nodes
├── staging-network
│   └── 3 staging nodes
└── production-network
    └── 20 production nodes

By Geography​

├── us-east-network
│   └── Nodes in US East region
├── eu-west-network
│   └── Nodes in EU West region
└── ap-south-network
    └── Nodes in Asia Pacific

By Team/Project​

├── team-data-network
│   └── Data engineering nodes
├── team-ml-network
│   └── ML inference nodes
└── iot-project-network
    └── IoT sensor nodes

Network Isolation​

What's isolated:

  • Nodes can only see other nodes in same network
  • Pipelines deploy only to nodes in same network
  • Metrics and logs scoped to network

What's shared:

  • User accounts span networks
  • Billing is account-level

Labels and Selectors​

Use labels on nodes to target specific groups within a network:

# Node labels
env: production
region: us-east-1
role: log-processor

Deploy pipelines using selectors:

# Deploy only to production log processors in us-east-1
selector:
  env: production
  region: us-east-1
  role: log-processor

This enables:

  • Gradual rollouts
  • Environment-specific deployments
  • Role-based targeting

Creating Networks​

Via Cloud UI:

  1. Go to Networks dashboard
  2. Click "Create Network"
  3. Enter name and description
  4. Click "Create"

Via CLI:

expanso network create my-network

What's Next?​

👉 Nodes - Learn about edge runtime

👉 Deploy a Node - Add nodes to your network