What is a Gateway Load Balancer in AWS?

Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB) is a managed service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) designed to distribute incoming internet traffic across various targets inside a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Dissimilar to different types of load balancers presented by AWS, for example, Application Load Balancer (ALB) or Network Load Balancer (NLB), which work at higher layers of the OSI model (Layer 7 for ALB and Layer 4 for NLB), Gateway Load Balancer works at the network level (Layer 3).

GWLB is explicitly designed to deal with large volumes of traffic at high throughput and low latency, making it appropriate for situations where traditional load balancers might struggle to adapt to the size of incoming requests. It has routing traffic based on IP addresses, making it ideal for distributing traffic to a different set of targets, including EC2 instances, containers, and IP addresses.

The main features of the Gateway Load Balancer include:

• High Availability: GWLB is designed to be highly accessible across numerous accessibility zones inside a single AWS region, ensuring resilience against failures.
• Scalability: It can scale automatically to deal with differing levels of traffic without manual intervention, obliging development in application demand.
• Security: GWLB supports integration with AWS security services like AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) for upgraded assurance against common web exploits and attacks.
• Monitoring and Health Checks: It gives health checks to targets to ensure that only healthy instances get traffic, further developing general application reliability.
• IPv6 Support: Gateway Load Balancer supports both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic, allowing applications to be available over the internet using either protocol.

In the advanced landscape of cloud computing, managing incoming internet traffic efficiently is fundamental for ensuring the accessibility, scalability, and reliability of applications. AWS offers a set of services to address these necessities, and one such help is the Gateway Load Balancer (GWLB).

Gateway Load Balancer is an incredible tool intended to distribute incoming traffic across multiple targets inside an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Dissimilar to other load balancers like Application Load Balancer (ALB) or Network Load Balancer (NLB), which work at higher layers of the OSI model, Gateway Load Balancer has capabilities at the network (Layer 3) level.

Understanding how to configure and use the Gateway Load Balancer is significant for architects and administrators managing AWS infrastructure. In this guide, we will delve into the primary terminologies related to GWLB, provide a step-by-step process for design, offer models and clarifications for better perception, and address habitually posed inquiries to ensure complete comprehension of this fundamental AWS administration. We should investigate how Gateway Load Balancer can improve the presentation, scalability, and reliability of your applications hosted on AWS.