
An application delivery controller (ADC) is a computer networking device in a datacenter, usually a part of an application delivery network (ADN). It is generally deployed in data centers to optimize application performance, makes applications run faster, decreases the required bandwidth, ensures availability of applications, secure, and improves resource efficiency by offloading servers, providing deep payload inspection, and making efficient use of complex protocols. Earlier, ADC were deployed for externally-facing web applications, but now they are used in delivering services for numerous types of business applications and protocols. In addition, an ADC incorporates numerous OSI layer 3-7 services encompassing load-balancing. Other features existing in ADC include SSL offload, Web Application Firewall, NAT64, DNS64, and proxy/reverse proxy.