The five values that identify a flow: protocol plus the source and destination IP addresses and ports. Azure Load Balancer hashes them by default to spread traffic, and IP flow verify in Network Watcher takes them as its input.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains 5-tuple in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- VALUES
Returns in DAX the distinct column values, or table rows, still visible after filters are applied, sometimes with an extra blank entry. CALCULATE often takes the result as a table filter.
- Flow
The unit of work inside a Lakeflow pipeline that takes data from a source, transforms it and lands it in a destination like a streaming table. Streaming flows either append or update, and
CREATE FLOWlets you declare a flow apart from the table it feeds. - Azure Load Balancer
Layer-4 load balancer operating within a region, with zone redundancy on the Standard SKU; it has no WAF, doesn't terminate TLS and can't route by URL.
- IP flow verify
Network Watcher tool that tests a packet and reports whether it would be let through or dropped, naming the deciding NSG rule.
- Network Watcher
Collection of Azure network troubleshooting tools: next hop, IP flow verify, packet capture, Connection Monitor and flow logs, among others.
Related terms
- Network Watcher IP flow verify
Checks a 5-tuple against the security and admin rules on a VM's NIC and reports whether it is allowed or denied, naming the rule responsible. Only TCP and UDP are supported, and scale sets are excluded.
- Packet capture
Network Watcher feature that records a VM's traffic, filtered by 5-tuple and bounded by a time limit (18,000 seconds, or 5 hours, by default). It depends on the Network Watcher Agent extension.
- Session persistence
How Load Balancer distributes traffic: None, the default 5-tuple hash; Client IP, a 2-tuple affinity; or Client IP and Protocol, a 3-tuple affinity.