Load Balancing : Everything Explained With Details

Load Balancing is a network system technology, which can perfectly analyze the response times and resource utilization of individual servers and can process a request from the outside the network or within the network with the best server performance by dividing the load on a single server. The web servers has such host addresses like www1, www2, www3, etc. or sometimes an assigned country codes to make the visitor understand he / she is not on the wrong domain.
Load Balancing Technology allows to every server accessible publicly, although there are multiple servers behind using the same domain.

Some Examples of Load Balancing Technology Deployed Servers

If you perform a DIG, if the server shows 2 or more servers, then the domain is probably using Load Balancing technology. Some time you might notice www2 url for the downloads from HP’s official download pages using Load Balancing.

Web Proxy and Load Balancing : The main target of Load Balancing and Web Proxy is very closer. But there are big differences.

How Load Balancing Works

The Network Systems for load balancing technology are used for load balancing are offered as service and the main server uses specific API to run Load Balancing. As I have said at the beginning, aim of Load Balancing is to divide the load of sudden rush on a server to multiple servers and it wan protect from DDoS attacks from only valid requests. Though DDoS can happen even using Load Balancing technology if the total load exceeds the capacity.

Load Balancing Explained With Details

Advantages of Load Balancing Technology

• Hardware upgrades can be done as needed.
• Unlike distributed computing technology, load balancing technology do not need the user to be remain connected with the same server. This is important for SSL connections like online banking and online shopping.

Types of Load Balancing Technology

Depending on the situation, Load Balancing Technology can be used as software solution or a hardware solution. Usage depends on the situation.
As one can guess, this software dependent Load Balancing Technology has problems as it is dependent on various factors – in case of a virtualization deployed server – the case gets complex.

Round Robin Load Balancing

Round Robin method uses a single IP address. It is not a DNS server, but a NAT proxy which performs the load balancing. Advantage is that only one IP address is required to and this Load Balancing Technology requires only small administrative work.

NAT with feedback Load Balancing

As you can see Round Robin has some problems, like the main server which eventually might handle a huge load. The NAT proxy creates a list from which it determines which will be the next destination server. The installation and configuration however, becomes painful.
URL based Round Load Balancing

Suitable for FTP server. The load balancer determines which server is responsible based on the URL for the request. These directories are stored on different servers. Since the load distribution from the desired target directory filtered to the data stream needs a very fast computer, it is ideal for distributed or grid, but the usage of this Load Balancing method is perfect for public websites – that is why now cloud servers are widely being employed for URL based Round Load Balancing.

This article on Load Balancing is written by? This article on Multi Core Processors is written by Mr. Kanai Lal Saha. His other articles are linked within the post.