Those new on their cloud journey can be inundated with the vast amounts of services the cloud offers. Today we’re going to discuss the differences between network load balancers, and application load balancers.
In any environment, the ability to distribute traffic evenly and remove a single point of failure is paramount.
Both options are found in public cloud provider offerings and they are useful for different purposes. Choosing the right one could have a great impact on the environment’s effectiveness.
When it comes to load balancing, choosing between network load balancers and application load balancers can be tricky. Here are some key differences to consider:
Concerned with speed and traffic flow?
Network load balancers operate at the transport layer
Distribute traffic based on IP address and port
Ideal for handling large volumes of traffic
Network load balancers are network devices that distribute traffic at the network layer 3-4 of the open systems intercommunication model. Traffic is determined and distributed based on IP address and port number of the server. This is computationally less complex, allowing high volumes of traffic.
If speed and performance is needed to distribute traffic, a network load balancer is recommended.
Business need drives technological decision
Have you implemented loosely-coupled components?
Perhaps a need for enhanced intelligence capabilities?
Microservices architecture?
Application load balancers operate at the application layer
Can distribute traffic based on web content
Better suited for handling complex and loosely-coupled applications.
Operating at layer 7 of the open systems interconnection model brings enhanced features. Application load balancers can inspect traffic content and distribute it based on the content of the web request. This also makes them require more computationally, therefore they will be ‘slower’.
Network load balancers tasks are less complex and simpler to set up, while application load balancers offer more advanced features and customization options.
We must first consider the main business objective. Once that is determined we can make a more informed design decision given what we have discussed above.
Ultimately, the best choice for your organization will depend on your specific needs and priorities.
Thanks for reading!