Traffic within a network doesn’t all behave the same way. In this episode, we explain the difference between north-south and east-west traffic flows—a concept that is essential in both design and troubleshooting. North-south traffic moves between internal networks and external entities, such as clients on the internet or external data services. East-west traffic, on the other hand, refers to communication between devices within the same network, such as servers in a data center or containers in a cluster.

We dive into how different architectures, such as three-tier and spine-and-leaf, influence these traffic patterns. You’ll learn how optimizing east-west flow is critical for performance in virtualized and microservices environments, while north-south traffic often requires tighter security controls and policy enforcement. Whether you're designing a new network, deploying a firewall, or diagnosing slow application responses, understanding traffic direction helps you make more informed decisions and prioritize performance tuning where it matters most.