Azure Front Door: Global Load Balancing

Azure Front Door is a globally distributed application delivery network that operates at Layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS). It routes client requests to the fastest available backend origin across multiple Azure regions using anycast networking — traffic enters the Azure backbone at the nearest edge PoP rather than traversing the public internet to your origin. Front Door provides global load balancing, SSL offload, CDN caching, and a built-in Web Application Firewall in a single service.

Azure Front Door is available in two tiers. Standard includes CDN caching, custom domains with managed TLS, rules engine, and basic WAF. Premium adds advanced WAF with managed rule sets (Microsoft Default and OWASP rule sets), Bot protection, security reports, Private Link integration (to send traffic to origins over a private endpoint without public IP), and Azure Defender integration. Most production web applications use Premium for its WAF and Private Link capabilities.