Inside the network powering Walmart

• 270M weekly customers rely on Walmart’s global network.
• Automation and standardization keep performance sharp across 10,000 stores and supply chain locations.
• Cloud tech and edge computing power drive innovation, speed, and a future-ready infrastructure.

In today's dynamic retail landscape, our network is mission critical to provide a seamless shopping experience for our customers and members. To achieve this, we rely on a sophisticated infrastructure that supports every aspect of the business for our more than 10,000 stores, 1,000 supply chain locations, and e-commerce sites in 19 countries. 

With 270 million customers shopping with us weekly, our network must be capable of scaling between peaks—this requires a careful balance between our cloud, hardware and system applications, and a massive amount of coordination on the backend—backed by engineering excellence and operational precision.

Inside our massive network

Our scale is immense, comprising more than 100,000 routers and switches and 450,000 wireless access points. These systems manage interactions between the more than five million associate devices and countless enterprise devices that connect to our network at any given moment. 

This vast connectivity generates an extraordinary amount of data—approximately 10 petabytes per day—from every visit, purchase, and interaction across our stores, website, and app. Our networks process and manage this data in real-time, ensuring seamless communication and up-to-date information for our customers, members and associates. 

To support this scale, we deploy resources across cloud, enterprise, and edge environments. This enables application teams to consume resources efficiently and scale as needed. Given the size and complexity of our operations, network uptime is not just a convenience, it is business imperative. Any disruptions can lead to significant financial impact and erode the trust our customers place in us.   

The discipline behind our network

Operating a network of this magnitude requires discipline, consistency, and resilience at every layer. From the solutions we build to the providers we partner with, we embed simplicity, redundancy, and automation throughout our systems to ensure seamless performance at scale. 

We manage a vast and complex environment, balancing cloud, hardware, and system applications across thousands of locations. In this context, we cannot afford “unique snowflakes” or custom configurations that may seem helpful in isolation but introduce fragility under pressure. Instead, we prioritize standardization and redundancy. By maintaining consistency across our global footprint, our teams can troubleshoot efficiently, deploy updates reliably, and ensure a uniform experience for associates and customers alike. 

Before any new network technology or change is introduced, it undergoes rigorous pre-deployment validation in dedicated staging environments. These environments mirror our live production network, enabling us to simulate real-world conditions and conduct comprehensive testing. This includes: 

• Performance testing to ensure scalability under peak loads; 
• Security assessments to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities; 
• Regression testing to confirm that new changes don't inadvertently impact existing functionality. 

Whether it’s infrastructure, applications, or provider relationships, we build with failover and recovery in mind. This commitment to simplicity, automation, and resilience ensures our network remains robust, responsive, and ready. 

Our past, present and future 

Our network's evolution reflects the transformation of enterprise IT itself. From the deployment of our first network in 1988, which began with legacy mainframe systems, to building a modern, agile, and resilient digital backbone.  

Today, we are embracing cloud-native architectures and leveraging the scalability of public, private, and hybrid cloud environments to support a growing portfolio of applications and services. This evolution has included the unification of our store and eCommerce clouds, the development of Walmart Cloud Native Platform and our Triplet Model, each step designed to enhance flexibility, speed, and innovation.  

Edge computing is becoming increasingly strategic, allowing us to deploy computing resources closer to our stores and distribution centers, reducing latency and improving the performance of critical applications like real-time inventory management and enhancing the in-store customer experience.  

Underpinning all of this is a growing emphasis on network automation and orchestration. Through advanced tooling and scripting, we streamline configuration, deployment, and troubleshooting—enabling faster, more reliable operations at scale. 

But our journey is far from over. We are always working to enhance our enterprise architecture, infrastructure capabilities, platform services, and data excellence. While some advancements in technology take time to mature, our commitment to progress never wavers. We continue to invest in robust infrastructure, rigorous operational processes, and emerging technologies to ensure our network remains secure, high-performing, and future-ready. The path to scaling connectivity is ongoing—and we’re energized by the innovations still to come.