Canvas CloudAI
Canvas Cloud AI

Layer 4 Load Balancer

advanced
networking
Enhanced Content

Definition

Load balancer that works at the transport layer, routing traffic based only on IP address and port number without looking at the content. Like a mail sorter who only reads the address on the envelope, not what's inside.

Real-World Example

A Layer 4 load balancer routes all traffic on port 443 to backend servers based on IP, handling millions of connections per second with very low latency.

Cloud Provider Equivalencies

All of these provide Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) load balancing that routes traffic using IP/port (and connection metadata) without inspecting HTTP content. They’re commonly used for high-throughput, low-latency, pass-through load balancing and non-HTTP protocols.

AWS
Network Load Balancer (NLB)
AZ
Azure Load Balancer
GCP
Cloud Load Balancing (TCP/UDP Network Load Balancer)
OCI
OCI Network Load Balancer

Explore More Cloud Computing Terms