Load balancer: Definition and Applications
TL;DR:
Load balancer distributes incoming traffic across backend servers. Layers: L4 (TCP/UDP by IP:port) and L7 (HTTP with URL/header/cookie routing). Algorithms: round-robin, least-connections, IP-hash, weighted. Examples: HAProxy, nginx upstream, AWS ALB, GCP Load Balancing.
What is Load balancer
Load balancer distributes incoming traffic across backend servers. Layers: L4 (TCP/UDP by IP:port) and L7 (HTTP with URL/header/cookie routing). Algorithms: round-robin, least-connections, IP-hash, weighted. Examples: HAProxy, nginx upstream, AWS ALB, GCP Load Balancing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does this apply to my project?
See definition above. Most web projects with traffic > 100 RPS need it.