A system includes one or more load balancers of a cloud service and front end computing devices. The front end computing devices receive, from the one or more load balancers, a first data packet, and determine that the first data packet includes a first source internet protocol (IP) address associated with a virtual machine (VM), a tunneling protocol identifier (ID), and a second source IP address associated with a host computing device that hosts the VM. The front end computing devices generate, based at least in part on a cloud tunneling protocol, a second data packet that includes a first destination IP address associated with the VM, the tunneling protocol ID, and a second destination IP address associated with the host computing device. The front end computing devices send the second data packet to the VM via a direct return route that bypasses the one or more load balancers.