10.0.0.0/8

Private address space is meant for networks that are not directly addressed on the public Internet. Organizations can reuse these addresses internally because Internet routers do not treat them as globally unique destinations.

This block is not routable on the public Internet. Hosts using it normally reach the Internet through NAT (Network Address Translation), a proxy, or a VPN (virtual private network) gateway, and inbound connections from the Internet need an explicit public address and forwarding rule.

A system administrator is likely to encounter this range in corporate LAN (local area network) environments, VPN connections, Kubernetes clusters, lab networks, and cloud VPC (virtual private cloud) networks. Seeing one of these addresses in logs usually means the traffic came from inside a private network, through a VPN, or from a device behind NAT rather than from a globally reachable host.

Firewall tip: private-use addresses are normally listed with addresses that cannot be routed globally. Internet-facing firewalls usually drop packets with these addresses when they arrive from the Internet as source addresses. They are allowed on trusted internal, VPN, lab, and cloud-private interfaces where you intentionally use the range.