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spring-bootmicroservicesnetflix-zuulnetflix-ribbon

Use case for Zuul and Netflix Ribbon

Both Zuul and Ribbon can be used for load balancing. But in which case should we prefer Zuul over Ribbon and vice versa?

Solution

  • By default Zuul load balancer using the ZoneAwareLoadBalancer from Ribbon. So there is nothing like choosing between Zuul and Ribbon for Load-Balancing, it's basically Ribbon who is involved in Load-Balancing. check out Zuul load-balancing

    As Ribbon is a client-side load balancer module and is integrated to many http client modules. As an example, Feign and Load-balanced RestTemplate support Ribbon. do check Ribbon's working with load balancer

    Regarding Zuul, there is a RibbonRoutingFilter that routes your request to an actual service instance. RibbonRoutingFilter is using Ribbon to choose a server from the list that is given from your configuration or from Eureka. So if you want to use Zuul as a load-balanced reverse proxy, Zuul needs Ribbon.