API Gateway vs Load Balancer

The text explores the roles and functionalities of load balancers and API gateways in modern cloud-based architectures, highlighting their distinct purposes and the complexities they introduce. Load balancers distribute incoming requests across multiple servers or containers to enhance resilience, security, and SSL termination, while API gateways manage routing, authentication, authorization, and rate-limiting for microservices architectures. Despite their different functions, integrating these components can add complexity and latency, suggesting the use of a single Ingress device, especially within Kubernetes environments, to simplify routing and scaling tasks. The text emphasizes the importance of selecting a straightforward and effective Ingress solution to streamline architectural decisions and improve application performance without unnecessary complexity.