A practical foundation for APIs, integrations, and cloud systems
When you work in integration – APIs, middleware, cloud platforms, automation, or data flows — you are building bridges between systems.
And every one of those bridges runs on the internet.
Early in my career, networking felt like something other people did — network engineers, infrastructure teams, cloud specialists. I focused on payloads, mappings, connectors, and processes. But over time, I realised that many of the hardest integration problems weren’t logic problems at all.
They were networking problems.
This article is a practical, beginner-friendly guide to internet and networking basics — written specifically for integration engineers, API developers, and anyone working with distributed systems.
You don’t need to become a network expert.
But understanding these fundamentals will make you far more effective at designing, debugging, and explaining integrations.
Why networking basics matter in integration work
If you work with:
- APIs
- iPaaS platforms (Boomi, Workato, Mule, etc.)
- Cloud services
- Databases
- B2B / EDI connections
- AI agents calling tools
…then you are already relying on networking, whether you realise it or not.
Networking knowledge helps you:
- Diagnose failures faster
- Understand timeout and connectivity issues
- Communicate better with infrastructure and security teams
- Design more resilient integrations
The internet: a simple mental model
At its core, the internet is a global network of computers that can send data to each other.
There is no “cloud” in the abstract sense.
There are simply machines — servers — connected via cables, fibre, and wireless networks, following shared rules.
In integration terms:
Your system → the network → another system
Every API call, webhook, file transfer, or database connection follows this path.
Clients and servers (the backbone of integration)
Most integration communication follows a client–server model.
Client
- Initiates the request
- Examples:
- An integration process
- A Python script
- An API consumer
- An AI agent calling a tool
Server
- Receives the request
- Processes it
- Returns a response
In integrations, systems often switch roles:
- Your platform might be a client when calling an ERP API
- The same platform becomes a server when exposing an API to partners
Understanding this dual role is key in integration architecture.
IP addresses: how systems locate each other
Every device connected to a network has an IP address.
Think of it as the machine’s physical address on the internet.
Examples:
- IPv4:
192.168.10.25 - IPv6: much longer, increasingly common
Key points:
- IP addresses identify where a system lives
- Internal systems use private IPs
- Public services use public IPs
In real projects, you rarely work directly with IPs — which leads us to DNS.
DNS: translating names into locations
Humans work with names. Networks work with numbers.
DNS (Domain Name System) translates a domain name into an IP address.
For example:
api.company.com → 34.120.18.92
This happens every time:
- An integration calls an API
- A connector connects to a SaaS platform
- A webhook endpoint is triggered
When DNS fails, integrations fail — often with confusing errors that look like application problems but are actually network ones.
Ports: multiple services on the same server
A single server can run many services simultaneously.
Ports tell the network which service to talk to.
Common examples:
- 80 → HTTP
- 443 → HTTPS
- 22 → SSH
- 5432 → PostgreSQL
When you configure:
- Database connections
- API endpoints
- Secure tunnels
You are always (implicitly or explicitly) working with ports.
Protocols: the rules of communication
A protocol defines how systems talk to each other.
As integration engineers, we mostly work on top of these protocols — but they still shape everything we do.
The most important ones to know
TCP
- Reliable
- Ordered
- Guarantees delivery
- Used by APIs, databases, file transfers
UDP
- Faster, but unreliable
- Used for DNS, streaming, monitoring
HTTP / HTTPS
- The foundation of APIs and web services
- Request–response based
- Stateless by design
Most integration platforms abstract this away — but the behaviour still matters.
HTTP: the language of APIs
HTTP is at the heart of modern integration.
Every API call includes:
- A method (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE)
- A URL
- Headers
- Optional body
And every response includes:
- A status code
- Headers
- A payload (often JSON)
Common status codes you’ll see in logs:
- 200 – Success
- 400 – Bad request
- 401 – Authentication issue
- 403 – Authorisation issue
- 404 – Resource not found
- 500 – Server-side failure
Once you understand HTTP, API troubleshooting becomes far less mysterious.
HTTPS: security by default
HTTPS is HTTP with encryption (TLS).
It ensures:
- Data is encrypted in transit
- You’re talking to the real system
- Credentials and payloads are protected
In enterprise integration:
- HTTPS is expected
- Certificates and trust stores become part of the job
- Many “it worked yesterday” issues trace back to certificates
Data formats travelling over the network
Networking moves bytes.
Applications care about structure.
Common formats in integration:
- JSON (most APIs)
- XML (legacy systems, EDI-adjacent integrations)
- CSV (batch data)
- Binary (files, documents)
Networking doesn’t care what the payload is — but your integration logic definitely does.
When integrations fail: common network causes
Some of the most frequent integration issues are not logic bugs.
They are:
- DNS resolution failures
- Firewalls blocking traffic
- Wrong ports
- Timeouts
- SSL certificate issues
- Network latency
Knowing networking basics helps you quickly answer:
“Is this a system problem, a network problem, or a configuration problem?”
Firewalls and access control (high level)
Firewalls decide:
- Which IPs can talk to which systems
- Which ports are allowed
- Which traffic is blocked
In practice, this explains:
- “It works in dev but not prod”
- “The partner can’t reach our API”
- “The database connection times out”
Integration engineers often become the translators between security teams and application teams.
Local, private, and public networks
Some important distinctions:
Localhost (127.0.0.1)
- The machine talking to itself
- Common in development
Private networks
- Internal systems
- Not reachable from the public internet
Public networks
- Cloud services
- External APIs
- Partner systems
Understanding where a system lives helps you reason about connectivity, security, and architecture.
Bringing it all together
Every integration operates across layers:
- Network (IPs, ports)
- Transport (TCP / UDP)
- Protocol (HTTP / HTTPS)
- Application (APIs, payloads, logic)
When something breaks, working through these layers calmly and methodically is a powerful skill.
Integration is not just about moving data.
It’s about helping systems understand each other across boundaries — technical, organisational, and sometimes cultural.
Networking fundamentals give you clarity when things go wrong, confidence in conversations with other teams, and a stronger architectural mindset.
You don’t need to know everything.
You just need a solid foundation.
And from there, everything else builds more easily.