AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – AssociateNetworking and Content DeliveryMedium
A company is deploying a new containerized application that requires very low latency and high throughput between its services. These services are deployed across multiple EC2 instances within the same VPC. The application needs to handle millions of requests per second. Which type of Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) is best suited for this workload?
- ANetwork Load Balancer (NLB)
- BApplication Load Balancer (ALB)
- CGateway Load Balancer (GWLB)
- DClassic Load Balancer (CLB)
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. Network Load Balancer (NLB)
Network Load Balancers (NLBs) are designed to handle extremely high throughput and very low latency, making them ideal for containerized applications requiring millions of requests per second and operating at the transport layer (Layer 4).
Why the other options are wrong
- B. ALBs operate at Layer 7 (application layer), suitable for HTTP/HTTPS, but introduce more latency than NLBs.
- C. GWLBs are designed for deploying, scaling, and managing third-party network virtual appliances, not direct application load balancing.
- D. CLBs are a legacy offering, generally not recommended for new deployments due to limitations compared to ALB and NLB.
Network Load Balancer (NLB)
An Elastic Load Balancer that operates at the connection level (Layer 4) to route traffic to targets within a VPC. It's designed for extreme performance, high throughput, and ultra-low latency.
- Handles millions of requests per second with very low latency.
- Supports static IP addresses for the load balancer.
- Ideal for TCP, UDP, and TLS traffic where performance is critical.
Memory trick: NLB: Network, Not just any Layer, 4 Low Latency and Lots of traffic.