AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – AssociateNetworking and Content DeliveryMedium
A company is migrating a legacy application to AWS. The application uses UDP port 5000 for inter-service communication and requires extremely low latency and high throughput. The SysOps administrator needs to distribute UDP traffic to a fleet of EC2 instances. Which AWS service is the most appropriate for this requirement?
- AClassic Load Balancer (CLB).
- BNetwork Load Balancer (NLB).
- CAmazon CloudFront.
- DApplication Load Balancer (ALB).
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: B. Network Load Balancer (NLB).
A Network Load Balancer (NLB) operates at Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) and is designed for extreme performance, high throughput, and ultra-low latency. It is the only Elastic Load Balancing type that supports UDP traffic distribution, making it ideal for the given requirements.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. CLBs are legacy and do not support UDP traffic.
- C. CloudFront is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for caching web content, not a load balancer for backend UDP services.
- D. ALBs operate at Layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS) and do not support UDP traffic.
Network Load Balancer (NLB)
A Network Load Balancer (NLB) operates at Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) and is optimized for extreme performance, high throughput, and ultra-low latency, making it suitable for demanding network traffic distribution.
- Supports TCP and UDP protocols.
- Handles millions of requests per second.
- Provides static IP addresses per Availability Zone.
Memory trick: For raw 'Network' (Layer 4) traffic like 'UDP', you need the 'Network Load Balancer'.