Layer 7 Load Balancing

Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications.

1. WAF Integration

The Application Gateway **WAF** skew provides centralized protection of your web applications from common exploits and vulnerabilities. It is based on the **OWASP Core Rule Set (CRS)** and can be run in 'Detection' or 'Prevention' mode. **Architect Tip:** Always start in Detection mode to ensure no false positives are blocking real users.

2. Path-Based Routing

You can route traffic based on URL paths. For example, toolliyo.com/images/* goes to an S3-equivalent storage pool, while toolliyo.com/api/* goes to your .NET container fleet. This allows you to build a unified URL structure for a complex microservice architecture.

3. Architect Insight

Q: "Does Application Gateway support WebSockets?"

Architect Answer: "YES! It has full support for **WebSockets** and **HTTP/2**. This is critical if you are building real-time .NET applications with **SignalR**. Just ensure that you enable 'Cookie-Based Affinity' if your SignalR setup hasn't been configured with a backplane like Redis."