GCP – Cloud WAN: Premium Tier & Verified Peering Provider for Reliable Global Connectivity

Recently at Google Cloud Next 25, we announced our latest Cross-Cloud Network innovation: Cloud WAN, a fully managed, reliable, and secure solution to transform enterprise wide area network (WAN) architectures. Today, we continue our series of deep dives into the technologies powering Cloud WAN, namely Premium Tier networking and the Verified Peering Provider program. 

The ever-changing enterprise network

The evolution of enterprise WANs is marked by a significant shift from primarily connecting branches and headquarters to managing a growing volume of traffic directed towards the internet, cloud-based services, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. In this transformed landscape, achieving consistent end-to-end reliability has become a paramount concern for organizations.

However, ensuring end-to-end reliability with traditional WAN architectures can often be costly and complex. The integration of solutions from multiple vendors can escalate both expenses and operational intricacy. Furthermore, the common practice of overprovisioning network resources to guarantee reliability adds a significant financial burden. The reliance on multiple internet hops to reach cloud services can introduce latency and result in unpredictable service level agreements (SLAs). Compounding these challenges, fluctuating bandwidth demands make effective cost management increasingly difficult.

In essence, traditional WAN architectures present substantial hurdles to obtaining consistent end-to-end reliability in a cost-effective, manageable, and predictable manner, especially as businesses accelerate their adoption of cloud and SaaS solutions.

Cloud WAN: Global connectivity for distributed enterprises

Cloud WAN offers a single, fully managed network solution for reliable, any-to-any connectivity. It leverages Google’s high-performance global network — the same infrastructure that connects over a billion users daily to services like YouTube, Search, Maps, and Workspace — to connect enterprise sites, cloud applications, data centers, and users. 

Cloud WAN enables a high-performance and consistently reliable architecture through: 

• Premium Tier: Google’s high performance global backbone ensures reliable traffic delivery within the Google network and all internet-bound traffic between Google services and the internet

• Verified Peering Provider (VPP) Program: This program ensures reliable, high-quality internet connectivity between the enterprise and Google networks.

The following sections will explore how these components work together to create a strong, dependable, and efficient WAN.

Premium Tier: a high-performance backbone

With Premium Tier, ingress user traffic enters Google’s network using Anycast at the edge point of presence (PoP) that is optimized for the user location. This traffic is carried over Google’s backbone to the relevant application hosted in any Google Cloud region. For outbound traffic, a peering location near the destination ISP is selected to avoid congestion on peering links. This sends outgoing packets along Google’s backbone for the bulk of their journey, and the traffic egresses near the destination, for the highest reliability. Google Cloud’s network is engineered and provisioned so that there are at least three independent paths (N+2 redundancy) between Google Cloud regions, providing availability even in the case of fiber issues or an unplanned outage. 

Traffic travels from the peering PoP to the end-user via an internet service provider’s (ISP) network. When the ISP participates in Google’s Verified Peering Provider (VPP) program, that means that Google has pre-validated their redundant and diverse connectivity to Google’s global network, providing a more reliable experience for the customer.

Key benefits of Premium Tier include:

• Global reach: Connectivity with 42 regions, 200+ network edge locations worldwide, 2M+ miles of fiber, and 33 subsea cable investments

• Enhanced performance: Cross-Cloud Network provides up to 40% improved performance compared to the public internet¹

• High reliability: Backed by a 99.99% uptime SLA, providing peace of mind for critical applications

• Security: Security services such as encryption for data at rest and in transit, and DDoS protection are turned on by default 

• Predictable pricing: Starting in 2H’25, we will offer committed use discounts for Premium Tier and Standard Tier internet data transfers

“Google Cloud’s Premium Tier network provides exceptional global reachability and consistent low latency for Snap’s 450M daily active users, enabling reachability in many countries being served from Google cloud regions. Google Cloud’s low inter-region latency helps Snap ensure a responsive real-time user experience, which is critical for excellent user experience. The superior network performance including low latency across cloud providers is the primary reason why Snap chose to use Google Cloud.” – Mahmoud Ragab, Manager Software Engineering, Snap

Verified Peering Provider: Simple and reliable connectivity

The Verified Peering Provider program recognizes ISPs who have demonstrated high-quality, diverse, and reliable connectivity to Google’s network. Google Cloud customers can choose to reach Google’s services through these ISPs to access all publicly accessible Google services. 

Choosing a Verified Peering Provider provides several benefits to Google Cloud customers:

• Simplified and reliable connectivity: Choosing a Verified Peering Provider simplifies Google connectivity by identifying ISPs that offer internet services optimized for enterprises. Customers who choose to connect with a Verified Peering Provider aren’t required to meet Google’s peering requirements, leaving the complexities of peering arrangements to the ISPs. 
• Stable internet latency: The program’s peering redundancy requirements help ensure that participating ISPs can maintain diverse paths to Google’s network across physically separated network locations, minimizing single points of failure. This design helps keep latency stable and predictable during planned network maintenance or unexpected outages.

• Ease of locating a well-connected ISP: Customers often struggle to locate an ISP with diverse and reliable connectivity to Google’s network, or understand where an ISP’s network is connected to Google. The Verified Peering Provider program discloses the locations where an ISP is connected to Google, allowing customers to select the ISP that is closest to their workloads. 

Expanding the Verified Peering Provider program

With Cloud WAN, we also expanded the Verified Peering Provider program. Since its launch last year, the program has successfully enrolled more than 40 ISPs across 50 metropolitan areas, spanning North America, Europe, Latin America, and the Asia Pacific region. These partnerships have been crucial in enhancing the Google Cloud experience for our users, offering simplified connectivity solutions to access publicly accessible Google services.

Building on this momentum, we are broadening VPP enrollment eligibility to additional ISPs worldwide. We encourage all interested ISPs to review the technical criteria and begin the enrollment process.

The foundation of a tomorrow’s enterprise network

Together, Premium Tier and the Verified Peering Provider program enable Cloud WAN with high-performance, reliable, and secure connectivity to Google Cloud resources and the broader internet.

Premium Tier helps ensure that traffic between the internet and Google Cloud stays on Google’s high-performance global network, as close to the user as possible, maximizing reliability and performance. This is crucial for globally distributed enterprises that require consistent application performance and user experience across different regions. 

The Verified Peering Provider program works alongside Premium Tier, signaling that the ISPs connecting to Google have reliable and redundant connectivity from Enterprise branches to Google’s global network. By choosing a Verified Peering Provider, you get simplified, enterprise-ready connectivity using the ISP’s existing connection to Google — plus access to its SLAs and support offerings.

By combining Premium Tier and a Verified Peering Provider, enterprises can achieve end-to-end:

• Improved performance: Higher bandwidth for faster application response times

• Enhanced reliability: Increased network uptime with consistent user experience 

• Simplified management: Streamlined network operations and reduced complexity

The demand for reliable and efficient enterprise network connectivity will only continue to grow with the emergence of AI. By leveraging Cloud WAN, enterprises can upgrade their networks and unlock the potential of cloud-based applications and services. Learn more about Cloud WAN on the Cross-Cloud Network solution page, and read the first blog in our Cloud WAN deep dive series on NCC Gateway. 

^{1. During testing, network latency was more than 40% lower when traffic to a target traveled over the Cross-Cloud Network compared to when traffic to the same target traveled across the public internet.}