Introducing QUIC Protocol Support for Network Load Balancer: Accelerating Mobile-First Applications

This article announces QUIC protocol support for AWS Network Load Balancer (NLB), enabling ultra-low latency traffic forwarding for mobile-first applications.

• QUIC is a UDP-based transport protocol with built-in encryption, congestion control, and multiplexing capabilities
• NLB implements QUIC passthrough mode, forwarding traffic directly to targets without terminating sessions
• Reduces end-to-end application latency by 25-30% compared to traditional protocols
• Maintains session stickiness using QUIC Connection IDs with encoded Server IDs
• Supports TCP_QUIC for HTTP/3 applications with automatic fallback to HTTPS on TCP 443
• Compatible with existing TCP health checks and Amazon EKS deployments
• New CloudWatch metrics: NewFlowCount_QUIC, ProcessedBytes_QUIC, QUIC_Unknown_Server_ID_Packet_Drop_Count
• No additional charges beyond standard NLB pricing; available in all AWS regions

NLB QUIC support provides native AWS solution for mobile applications requiring low-latency, high-performance networking without custom implementations.