Cloud & Infrastructure Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Jan 15, 2026 4 min read

Gateway Load Balancer Use Cases

GWLB inserts third-party appliances (firewalls, IDS) inline. The use cases and the alternatives.

When GWLB wins

Third-party security appliances (Palo Alto, Fortinet) needed in the traffic path.

Compliance requirements that mandate specific appliance types.

AWS Network Firewall: managed; cheaper for AWS-native rules.

Cloudflare for HTTP-layer security. Wraps the architecture differently.

Centralised inspection VPC. All traffic flows through.

Cost is real; weigh against alternatives before committing.