Which protocol layer does Azure Load Balancer operate on?

Azure Load Balancer operates at Layer 4 (the Transport Layer) of the OSI model, handling TCP and UDP protocols. This means it distributes incoming network traffic based on data from the transport layer, such as IP addresses and port numbers. It performs basic load balancing by directing traffic to healthy backend instances without inspecting the content of the application layer. HTTP/HTTPS (Layer 7) is incorrect because Layer 7 load balancing, which inspects application-level content, is handled by services like Azure Application Gateway or Azure Front Door. SMB or NFS are file-sharing protocols, not load balancer operating layers. DNS-over-HTTPS is a method for encrypting DNS queries, unrelated to the core operational layer of a load balancer.