Why Load Balancing Is Important

INTRODUCTION

Modern high-traffic websites must handle hundreds of thousands, if not millions of the concurrent user or client requests when returning accurate text, images, video, or device data in a timely and consistent manner. As a result of this amount of requests, such websites might lag and eventually crash. The use of load balancers can prevent such events from occurring.

A load balancer is a system that distributes network or application traffic through several servers by acting as a reverse proxy. With a load balancer,

• User requests or network load are distributed through many servers in an optimal manner.
• Allows you to add or remove servers as needed, depending on demand.
• Sends requests to only online repositories, ensuring high availability and reliability.

So, what is Load balancing?

Load balancing is the process of evenly spreading incoming network traffic among a collection of backend servers, often referred to as a server farm or server pool. As the name implies, it is a process of balancing the load on a server, and load in this context refers to requests.

Some several techniques or algorithms can be utilized depending on their use. Some of them are:

1. Least connection: This approach takes the actual server load into account. The latest request is forwarded to the site that has the fewest pending requests at any given time.

2. Hash: Requests are distributed based on a key you choose, such as the client's IP address or the file URL.

3. IP Hash: The client's IP address is used to decide which server will receive the message.

Why is load balancing important?

1. Load balancing improves service availability and helps prevent downtimes.
2. To maximize the use of resources and reduce the response time.
3. A load balancer prevents the entire network from failing if a server from a server cluster fails.
4. A load balancer helps to manage traffic flow on a website.
5. Add flexibility to the network. For example, a site can be upgraded without downtime while using load balancers.
6. It improves scalability.
7. Load balancers improve the capacity of existing servers.

In conclusion, it is good practice to use and advisable to use load balancers if you plan on having a high-traffic website or application.