Application Gateway
Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. It operates at the application layer (OSI layer 7) and provides features like SSL termination, cookie-based session affinity, and URL-based routing. It is commonly used to improve application availability, security, and scalability by distributing incoming traffic across multiple backend servers.
Developers should use Application Gateway when building scalable web applications that require advanced traffic management, such as microservices architectures or multi-region deployments. It is particularly useful for scenarios needing SSL offloading, web application firewall (WAF) protection, or intelligent routing based on URL paths or host headers, making it ideal for cloud-based applications on platforms like Azure.