Networking
Azure Host SDN is comprised of Virtual Filtering Platform and the hardware offload counterpart Azure Accelerated Networking (AccelNet) with Azure SmartNIC based on FPGAs.
Azure Load Balancer implements L4 load balancing powered by Ananta, utilizing DSR and VM-to-VM Fastpath to reduce number of packets processed.
With stateless fallback on load balancers and host connection limit, the Azure networking stack is hostile to long-lived connections, especially in large quantities.