By choosing the right load balancer, you can optimize traffic distribution and system efficiency. With a GLB, you can deploy, manage, and scale virtual appliances, such as intrusion detection and prevention, firewalls, and deep packet inspection systems. It creates a single entry and exit point for all appliance traffic and scales your virtual appliances with demand. You can also use it to exchange traffic across virtual private cloud (VPC) boundaries. Financial services and healthcare often require end-to-end encryption or specific security compliance.
Network Load Balancer operates at layer 4 (transport layer), which means it routes traffic based on IP protocol data, TCP/UDP ports, and IP addresses. Unlike ALB, it doesn’t inspect the actual content of your packets—it just forwards them. Almost all protocols differ between ALB and NLB and are used for different use cases.
You can create your own rules or use AWS managed rules, such as IP reputation list rules, known bad inputs rules, and more. This will help you understand the supported functionalities common to both load balancers. An NLB is best for high-performance, low-latency, and scalable network-level balancing. Applications that distribute traffic on the transport layer use NLBs, especially considering its reliability. Gaming systems, media streaming services, and major IoT systems use NLBs. So when it comes to comparing performance metrics, NLB has the upper hand!
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NLB simply forwards packets without inspecting them deeply – making it lightning fast but less feature-rich. It’s like choosing between a sports car (NLB) and an SUV with all the fancy features (ALB). The dynamic port mapping feature is a game-changer for containerized apps. As containers spin up and down, ALB automatically detects the ports and adjusts routing accordingly. In 2016, AWS augmented its Classic ELB offering with an Application Load Balancer (ALB).
I would use NLB for any application where pure TCP/UDP traffic needs to be load balanced, providing extremely low latency, high performance and supporting unpredicted traffic spikes. Choosing between an Application Load Balancer and a Network Load Balancer doesn’t have to be daunting if you break it down into what each one offers. Remember, aligning your load balancer choice with your specific application needs is crucial for optimum performance. Don’t forget to evaluate operational requirements like traffic types and expected load before making your call. Your app architecture practically screams which load balancer it needs. ALB was built for these modern setups, with path-based routing that directs traffic to the right service.
Static IP Address Support
A GLB uses routing table look-ups to determine where to route the traffic. When choosing between Network Load Balancer (NLB) and Application Load Balancer (ALB) on AWS, the stakes are higher than most realize. One handles millions of requests per second at ultra-low latency, while the other inspects application-layer traffic with sophisticated routing rules.
- If one AWS zone fails, your NLB instances in other zones keep operating independently, providing true high availability without cross-zone failures.
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- Whichever you choose, following implementation best practices will ensure your load balancer becomes a reliable and optimized component of your AWS infrastructure.
- This means they’re all about TCP, UDP, and TLS traffic, ideal for applications requiring quick response times.
- These load balancers support different protocols to handle specific types of traffic and perform advanced functions.
Security Group Support
Its features—such SSL termination, session persistence, and content-based routing—enable it to offer assistance with complex routing scenarios. The limefx ALB has a listener component that checks for connection requests from clients. You can define rules for a listener that determine how the load balancer routes requests to its registered targets.
Both load balancers support security groups, which you can use to control the traffic allowed to reach your targets (such as EC2 instances, IP addresses, etc.). For example, you can configure the traffic to be received only from specific IP addresses, enabling you to control who can access your internet-facing or internal load balancers. These load balancers use different types of algorithms to distribute traffic evenly to their targets. An ALB uses a round-robin algorithm by default, routing traffic one after another. However, an NLB uses a flow hash algorithm so that traffic is routed to specific targets in a predetermined manner.
These high-traffic volumes require many resource servers with duplicate data. To redirect application traffic, ALBs examine the requested content, such as HTTP headers or SSL session IDs. NLBs examine IP addresses and other network information to redirect traffic optimally.
When to use: ALB vs. NLB vs. GLB
ALB scales too, but takes slightly longer to adapt to traffic surges. Both offer the same 99.99% availability SLA and operate across multiple AZs for fault tolerance. Ultimately, both ALB and ELB are powerful tools that enhance application performance and availability and are supported within your Sumo Logic account. Just like the Classic ELB, ALB allows you to add additional listeners and point them to different targets.
Container Integration Features
Once you’ve set up an AWS ALB, you can access its advanced configuration settings within the AWS Management Console. After going to the Load Balancer section on the EC2 home page, you can create and modify load balancers as needed. It’s easy to configure, making it a popular choice among AWS engineers who are familiar with its capabilities. If your environment consists of clearly defined services mapped to specific addresses, then the Classic ELB is the logical choice. A fundamental difference between AWS ELB and ALB is how they handle and route requests, which is best understood through the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model.
But, if you’re working with microservices and containerized applications or need advanced routing capabilities, ALB is the better option. With content-based routing, multiple target groups, and deeper AWS service integration, ALB offers greater flexibility and scalability for modern cloud-native environments. A GLB is ideal when you’re balancing on the network gateway https://limefx.vip/ level. For example, a GLB works well if you manage traffic between cloud and on-premises environments or across different regions.
The default load balancing algorithm used for ALB is round-robin. This algorithm routes traffic evenly across all healthy targets and is most commonly used when requests are similar in complexity. To enable session persistence for an NLB, you need to update the target group and enable the stickiness setting. The Network Load Balancer uses the client’s IP address to consistently route traffic to a specific target instance. Be aware that if multiple clients “sit” behind the same router or NAT gateway and share a single public IP address, traffic may not be distributed evenly.
An NLB supports TCP, UDP, and TLS protocols, which covers network-level traffic distributions. Finally, a GLB covers IP-based routing, handling any IP-based protocols. Choosing the right load balancer for your AWS architecture requires understanding the distinct capabilities of both NLB and ALB. Network Load Balancers excel in high-performance scenarios requiring TCP/UDP traffic handling, static IP addresses, and ultra-low latency. I would use ALB for almost any web application where HTTP/S traffic needs to be distributed to different targets like EC2 instances, IP addresses, or Lambda functions.
- An ALB uses a round-robin algorithm by default, routing traffic one after another.
- Ultimately, both ALB and ELB are powerful tools that enhance application performance and availability and are supported within your Sumo Logic account.
- ALB offers more granular security controls but terminates SSL connections.
- These rules can be path or header-based, and each request is directed to a defined target group.
But ALB takes it a step further with view/edit rules, where you can manage routing logic. The Application Load Balancer (ALB) performs TLS termination when you create an HTTPS listener. Similarly, the Network Load Balancer (NLB) performs TLS termination when you create a TLS listener. Keep in mind that if you use a different listener, such as TCP, then encrypted traffic will be forwarded (pass-through) to the targets, and traffic decryption will occur there. Existing flows continue to go to existing target appliances, new flows are rerouted to healthy target appliances.
This slashes your management overhead and keeps your architecture cleaner. This is perfect when you’ve got microservices or containerized apps where different services handle different parts of your application. If one AWS zone fails, your NLB instances in other zones keep operating independently, providing true high availability without cross-zone failures. If your infrastructure consists of separate services, each mapped to a distinct URL, and you need basic load balancing, then the Classic ELB is a solid choice.
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Because it combines OSI layers 3 and 4 balancing, it can route traffic between distinct regions and networks. Because it supports IP-based routing, it can distribute traffic across virtual gateways, so it can offer high scalability and availability. The target type is the endpoint that each of these load balancers routes traffic to. An ALB works with IP addresses, instance, and AWS Lambda target types. NLBs work with IPs and instances, and they can also route traffic to an ALB for more complex requests.
ALBs distribute incoming traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances. For example, an ecommerce application has a product directory, a shopping cart, and checkout functions. The ALB sends requests for browsing products to servers that contain images and videos but don’t need to maintain open connections. By comparison, it sends shopping cart requests to servers that maintain many client connections and save cart data for a long time. These load balancers support different protocols to handle specific types of traffic and perform advanced functions. ALBs support HTTP, HTTPS, and gRPC protocols for web-based traffic.