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My BP and relays are on the same local subnet, I would prefer to give them the private IP address in the topology files.
However, all of the guides I've come across explicitly state using public IPs. Is there a problem with using private IPs in the topology files to connect my BP node and my relay nodes?
Each of your Cardano nodes needs a static IP address to communicate between each other. You can use IP or domain names.
Block Producer (BP) node
For better security, you can choose to set a private IP to your BP node to communicate with your relays (on the same private network) since your BP is hosting sensitive data you don't really want to expose.
Relay nodes
However, it is necessary that the relay nodes have a public IP address as the other external relay servers will need to establish incoming TCP/IP connections with yours to exchange and update informations.
You can set 1 public IP address for each one of your relays but you can also use a single public IP address and port-forward to share with your relays.
I dont know how you manage your nodes :) but for security reasons, i would recommend to use another node, which will be the "Jump-Server".
this Jump-Server has a public_IP, which will be used for you to connect with ssh, and only this system will have access to connect with ssh to the rest of your nodes (BP and Relays)
