What are the differences between ALB and NLB?

Question

Accepted Answer

ALB (Application Load Balancer) routes HTTP/HTTPS traffic, while NLB (Network Load Balancer) handles TCP/UDP traffic at high performance.

ALB operates at Layer 7 (Application Layer) of the OSI model, allowing for advanced routing based on content.
NLB operates at Layer 4 (Transport Layer), making it suitable for handling millions of requests per second with low latency.
ALB supports features like host-based and path-based routing, which can direct traffic to different services based on URL.
NLB is ideal for applications that require extreme performance and can handle sudden spikes in traffic, such as gaming or IoT.
Example: Use ALB for a web application that needs to route traffic based on user requests, and NLB for a real-time gaming server.

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