When to use routing preference
When considering the use of routing preference in Azure, you should first analyze your scenario. As the network engineer in charge of the traffic cost-savings project, you learned what routing preference is and how it works. You suspect that modifying the routing preference for the public IP address of the application might reduce the cost of data transfer between the car factory in Singapore and the application.
Here, we discuss how you can decide whether changing the routing preference of the application in Azure fulfills the goal of the traffic cost savings project. We list some criteria that indicate whether routing preference meets your cost savings goal.
Cost savings
Performance
Decision criteria
Routing preference helps alleviate network traffic costs in your subscription. The routing preference of Internet minimizes traffic on the Microsoft network by routing traffic to services hosted in Azure across the public internet. Adjusting the routing preference to Internet might not be necessary for small organizations with a limited number of global locations or if network cost isn't an issue. Performance of network transfer must also be considered. The routing of traffic across the public internet might perform slower than the Microsoft network option. Here's a discussion of each of these factors.
| Criteria | Analysis |
|---|---|
| Cost savings | Does changing the routing preference to Internet result in network traffic cost savings? Ingress and egress traffic with Internet routing preference is cheaper than the routing preference of Microsoft network. |
| Performance | Is performance of the network traffic a concern? Traffic routed over the public internet has performance comparable to other cloud providers. The optimal performance is always with the default routing preference of Microsoft network. |
Apply the criteria
Changing the routing preference to Internet is a good choice if you wish to save costs on internet egress in your Azure subscription. However, if performance considerations are a concern and you wish to have the best network performance as possible, then the routing preference choice of Microsoft network is a better fit. Let's explore how this criterion applies to the network costs savings project.
The car manufacturer you work for has tasked you with determining a way to save network costs for the factory in Singapore. Currently, the application used by the factory in the Central US region has a routing preference of Microsoft network. You met with the application developers of the application and determined that the application doesn't have a network performance requirement.
You learned in the previous units that the Internet routing preference minimizes traffic across the Microsoft network. Routing the traffic for the application across the public internet could result in the cost savings goal of the project.
Should the application routing preference be changed to Internet?
You determined that routing preference does fulfill the goal of the cost-savings project. Adjusting the routing preference reduces the network costs of traffic between the factory in Singapore and the application in the Central US region. Users in the factory who connect to the application don't see a noticeable performance difference between routing across the Microsoft Network and the public internet. The application developers determine that routing over the public internet doesn't adversely affect the performance of the application used by the factory in the Central US region.