Writing About AI
Uvation
Reen Singh is an engineer and a technologist with a diverse background spanning software, hardware, aerospace, defense, and cybersecurity. As CTO at Uvation, he leverages his extensive experience to lead the company’s technological innovation and development.
By 2026, the Microsoft Azure global network has shifted from acting as a simple background transport layer to becoming a strategic foundation essential for enterprise reliability, user experience, and cost control. It is designed to withstand the sustained pressure of AI-heavy workloads and real-time analytics, which demand high bandwidth and predictable latency. To support this, Microsoft has expanded the network into a massive private backbone spanning continents, connecting regions and services via long-haul fiber and edge points of presence. This evolution ensures that internal traffic relies less on the public internet, delivering consistent performance at a global scale.
AI workloads, particularly the training of large models and real-time inference, require the movement of massive volumes of data, known as “east–west” traffic, between compute, storage, and accelerator resources. Even small increases in latency during these operations can slow down training cycles, as large language models often span multiple clusters or regions. To address this, Microsoft aligns its network investment with its AI infrastructure, implementing high-capacity interconnects and controlled routing paths inside datacenters to minimize round-trip times and congestion. Additionally, inside Azure regions, high-speed networking fabrics are used to connect thousands of servers, ensuring that network bottlenecks do not hinder the parameter synchronization required for AI training.
The physical foundation of the network relies on Microsoft-owned and leased fiber routes across continents, which allows Microsoft to manage traffic flows more predictably and respond faster to failures. This private global backbone carries traffic between Azure regions and customer workloads, reducing the variability often associated with public internet routes. Furthermore, Azure extends this network closer to users through edge Points of Presence (POPs) located in major metropolitan areas. These POPs connect customers to the backbone with minimal hops, significantly reducing the distance traffic travels before entering the private network, which is critical for latency-sensitive applications like financial trading and media streaming.
To manage complexity at scale, Azure utilizes a software-defined network model where traffic behavior is controlled by centralized policies rather than manual hardware configurations. Tools like Azure Virtual Network Manager (AVNM) allow administrators to group virtual networks and apply connectivity and security rules globally across subscriptions and regions. By defining intent through broad rules—such as isolating environments or establishing hub-and-spoke topologies—teams can enforce consistency and reduce the risk of configuration drift or security gaps that often occur in large estates. This centralized control plane enables organizations to align network behavior with internal standards without slowing down delivery.
Forced tunneling is a feature within Azure Virtual WAN that mandates internet-bound traffic to pass through a specific inspection point, such as a firewall or security appliance, rather than accessing the internet directly. This capability is essential for regulated industries like financial services and healthcare, which require strict control over data paths to meet compliance and audit standards. By using forced tunneling, organizations can log, inspect, and control all outbound traffic from a centralized location, ensuring uniform security policies are applied regardless of where the workload or user is located.
Azure addresses routing complexity through the Azure Route Server, which simplifies dynamic routing inside virtual networks. This service allows network virtual appliances (NVAs), such as third-party firewalls or SD-WAN routers, to exchange routes with Azure using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Instead of administrators having to maintain manual route tables—which are prone to errors during expansion—Route Server automatically learns and updates network paths as the environment changes. This ensures consistent traffic flow and reduces the operational burden of managing custom scripts for complex topologies.
Azure supports hybrid environments by extending its private backbone to on-premises sites and branch locations, reducing reliance on the public internet for enterprise connectivity. A key component of this is Azure ExpressRoute, which provides private, dedicated circuits for traffic between on-premises networks and Azure, ensuring higher reliability and consistent performance. Furthermore, through ExpressRoute Global Reach, the Azure backbone can act as a private transit network connecting an organization’s distinct on-premises sites to one another. This architecture offers a stable foundation for global enterprises that need to link core systems across multiple providers or physical locations.
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