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Networking Fundamentals · Intermediate

North-South Traffic

Traffic that enters or leaves a data center or network, moving between internal systems and external clients.

Definition

North-south flows pass through edge devices such as firewalls and load balancers. Traditional three-tier designs and perimeter security focus on this direction.

Example

A customer browsing a company website generates north-south traffic.

Exam tip

North-south = in and out; east-west = server to server inside.

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