ELB: ALB vs. NLB

Difficulty: Intermediate

Question

What is the difference between an Application Load Balancer (ALB) and a Network Load Balancer (NLB)?

Answer

ALB operates at Layer 7 (HTTP) and supports path-based routing. NLB operates at Layer 4 (TCP) for high performance and static IPs.

Concepts covered

ALB, NLB, Layer 7, Layer 4, Target Group